Age Thirteen Quotes & Sayings

Athenaeum, or Jonathan Edwards at thirteen entering Yale College, and while yet of a tender age shining in the horizon of American literature; while the same age finds H. W. Longfellow writing for the Portland Gazette. At fourteen John Quincy Adams was private secretary to Francis H. Dana, American Minister to Russia; at fifteen Benjamin Franklin was writing for the New England Courant, and at an early age became a noted journalist. Benjamin West at sixteen had painted "The Death of Socrates," at seventeen George Bancroft had won a degree in history, Washington Irving had gained — Charles Stewart Given

The Golden Age of science fiction is thirteen. — Terry Carr

Combat and rape, the public and private forms of organized social violence, are primarily experiences of adolescent and early adult life. The United States Army enlists young men at seventeen; the average age of the Vietnam combat soldier was nineteen. In many other countries boys are conscripted for military service while barely in their teens. Similarly, the period of highest risk for rape is in late adolescence. Half of all victims are aged twenty or younger at the time they are raped; three-quarters are between the ages of thirteen and twenty-six. The period of greatest psychological vulnerability is also in reality the period of greatest traumatic exposure, for both young men and young women. Rape and combat might thus be considered complementary social rites of initiation into the coercive violence at the foundation of adult society. They are the paradigmatic forms of trauma for women and men. — Judith Lewis Herman

I also say "Boy" a lot. Partly because I have a lousy vocabulary and partly because I act quite young for my age sometimes. I was sixteen then, and I'm seventeen now, and some times I act like I'm about thirteen. It's really ironical, because I'm six foot two and a half and I have gray hair. — J.D. Salinger

I was least attractive at age thirteen. Puberty ensnared me in its sebaceous, cysty grip. I was too skinny, my face hadn't grown into my teeth and my hair resembled a Brillo pad. I outgrew Thirteen, but she lives on inside me like a succubus ever draining me of my joie de vivre. There is no way in fucking hell I'm a Suicide Blonde dancing for INXS on that list. — Shannon Bradley-Colleary

Adeline, who is the girl that she once was, the bright Victorian girl shut behind dark paneled doors with her thirteen, fifteen, eighteen years of life and a Greek lexicon. She is the girl stopped in time who could not speak or feel at the side of her dead mother's bed. She keeps the cold, clear information of those days, unclouded by revision or the lies of age. — Norah Vincent

I do what he says and I close my eyes and open my mouth and the next thing I know he's got his twenty-eight-year-old tongue in my thirteen-year-old mouth and all I can think is that I don't think the hero is supposed to be doing this. — Andrea Portes

I began drinking alcohol at the age of thirteen and gave it up in my fifty sixth year; it was like going straight from puberty to a mid-life crisis. — George Montgomery

As Abby finally turned and fled the frigid temperatures of the roof, she realized she still didn't know if the Fallen were good or evil. Whether they intended to kill the humans or not.
All she knew was that, at the tender age of thirteen, Abby Rhodes had just fallen head over heels in love. — Rosalie Lario

It is simply amazing, at that age, when you're thirteen or fourteen, how you can take being loved for granted, how (even when you are wanted) you can feel utterly alone. — John Irving

Thirrin Freer Strong-in-the-Arm Lindenshield carried her names with ease. She was thirteen years old, tall for her age and could ride her horse as well as the best of her father's soldiers. She was also the heir to the throne of the Icemark. Her tutor might add that she was attentive when she wanted to be, clever when she bothered to try, and had her father's temper. Few compared her to her mother, who had died when Thirrin was born. But those who remembered the proud young woman of the fierce Hypolitan people said that Thirrin was her double. — Stuart Hill

She wore too much eyeliner then, at age thirteen, and now, at eighteen, she wears so much black under her eyes, she looks like a slutty linebacker raccoon. — A.S. King

A thirteen-year-old is a kaleidoscope of different personalities, if not in most ways a mere figment of her own imagination. At that age, what and who you are depends largely on what book you happen to be reading at the moment. — Jessica Mitford

I learned that adults were not soaring gods, but rather back-yard birds with broken wingtips.
When you are thirteen, about to free-fall into the real world, discovering the broken wingtips is terrifying. — Janet Turpin Myers

It's weird how much people change ...
It's kind of sad, if you think about it. Like there's no continuity in people at all. Like something ruptures when you hit twelve, or thirteen, or whatever the age is when you're no longer a kid but a "young adult," and after that you're a totally different person. Maybe even a less happy person. Maybe even a worse one. — Lauren Oliver

Now that young girls like my twelve-year-old friend Mai are being exposed to modern Western women like me through crowds of tourists, they're experiencing those first critical moments of cultural hesitation. I call this the "Wait-a-Minute Moment" - that pivotal instant when girls from traditional cultures start pondering what's in it for them, exactly, to be getting married at the age of thirteen and starting to have babies not long after. They start wondering if they might prefer to make different choices for themselves, or any choices, for that matter. Once girls from closed societies start thinking such thoughts, all hell breaks loose. — Elizabeth Gilbert

Since thirteen, she'd been preparing. She wasn't beautiful like these Bayhead Harbor girls, but it was surprising how men sometimes looked at her. More it was older men rather than guys her age, for some reason. [ ... ] There were guys - older guys - she'd yearned for so frankly you could see it in her face. — Joyce Carol Oates

For Liesel Meminger, the early stages of 1942 could be summed up like this:
She became thirteen years of age. Her chest was still flat. She had not yet bled. The young man from her basement was now in her bed.
***Q&A***
How did Max Vandenburg end up in liesel's bed? He fell. — Markus Zusak

Although he moved away from the Midwest for good at the age of thirteen, Ray Bradbury is a prairie writer. The prairie is in his voice, and it is his moral compass. It is his years spent in Waukegan, Illinois - later rechristened by Ray as 'Green Town' in many books and stories - that forever shaped him. — Sam Weller

I knew from the age of four that I wanted to preach. I didn't even consider it strange that grown people were listening to this kid preaching until I was around thirteen. I have never believed in limitations. — Al Sharpton

I got into the studio when I was thirteen. At the age of twelve I was doing public performances. — Chingy

Often low-income parents give their children every other thing they need for successful participation in school and the world of work except the planning and organizing skills and habit patterns needed to operate in complex settings. Many intelligent and able college students from low-income backgrounds confront these deficits when faced with a heavy assignment load ... These patterns are best acquired at an early age and need to be quite well developed by late elementary school or twelve or thirteen years of age. — James P. Comer

I lost Susy thirteen years ago; I lost her mother
her incomparable mother!
five and a half years ago; Clara has gone away to live in Europe and now I have lost Jean. How poor I am, who was once so rich! ... Jean lies yonder, I sit here; we are strangers under our own roof; we kissed hands good-by at this door last night
and it was forever, we never suspecting it. She lies there, and I sit here
writing, busying myself, to keep my heart from breaking. How dazzling the sunshine is flooding the hills around! It is like a mockery. Seventy-four years ago twenty-four days. Seventy-four years old yesterday. Who can estimate my age today? — Mark Twain

I put my friends and family first. I'm really just a normal thirteen-year-old girl who has a different hobby than most girls my age. Acting is kind of an extracurricular activity. — Natasha Calis

There, a year later, at the age of thirteen, Danny made his final decision about God. "I still remember where I was - the street in Jerusalem. I remember thinking that I could imagine there was a God, but not one who cared whether or not I masturbate. I reached the conclusion that there was no God. That was the end of my religious life. — Michael Lewis

Miss Sedley was almost as flurried at the act of defiance as Miss Jemima had been; for, consider, it was but one minute that she had left school, and the impressions of six years are not got over in that space of time. Nay, with some persons those awes and terrors of youth last for ever and ever. I know, for instance, an old gentleman of sixty-eight, who said to me one morning at breakfast, with a very agitated countenance, 'I dreamed last night that I was flogged by Dr Raine.' Fancy had carried him back five-and-fifty years in the course of that evening. Dr Raine and his rod were just as awful to him in his heart then, at sixty-eight, as they had been at thirteen. If the Doctor, with a large birch, had appeared bodily to him, even at the age of threescore and eight, and had said in awful voice, 'Boy, take down your pants ... ' Well, well ... — William Makepeace Thackeray

I had become an atheist at the age of thirteen, when atomic bombs were dropped on Japan. — Paul Krassner

Today, with tears in my eyes, I telephoned the mother of one of our children (aged thirteen) who had spoken for the first time since the age of three... — Michael Braccia

The dangers of eating animal products occur after the age of reproduction. If people developed cardiovascular disease that was fatal by the age of twelve or thirteen, eating animals would have died out long ago. You get it after you've already reproduced. — Neal Barnard

Renny was smarter and funnier and more original than they'd ever be, but he was thirteen. He was at the brutal age when many kids would sell all their uniqueness in their character for the right pair of shoes. — Francine Pascal

Adolescence is not only an important period in life, but that it is the only period where one may speak of life in the full sense of the word. The attractile drives are unleashed around the age of thirteen, after which they gradually diminish, or rather they are resolved in models of behaviour which are, after all, only constrained forces. The violence of the initial explosion means that the outcome of the conflict may remain uncertain for years; this is what is called a transitory regime in electrodynamics. But little by little the oscillations become slower, to the point of resolving themselves in mild and melancholic long waves; from this moment on all is decided, and life is nothing more than a preparation for death. This can be expressed in a more brutal and less exact way by saying that man is a diminished adolescent. — Michel Houellebecq

My first encounter with yoga was in 1969 with my older brother Doug. I was thirteen years old, and he was eighteen. He'd learned about yoga in California on a surfing trip, and when he came back to Houston, Texas, he introduced me to this new stuff he'd learned. I'll always be grateful for that positive influence at an early age. — David F. Swensen

When someone dies they can be any age you remember can't they ' she asked. As I tried to think of a reply she continued 'You probably think about the grown-up Tess because you were still close to her. But when I woke up I thought of her when she was three wearing a fairy skirt I'd got her in the Woolworth's and a policeman's helmet. Her wand was a wooden spoon. On the bus yesterday I imagined holding her when she was two days old. I felt the warmth of her. I remembered all her fingers clasped around my finger so tiny they didn't even meet. I remembered the shape of her head and stroking the nape of her neck till she slept. I remembered her smell. She smelled of innocence. Other times she's thirteen and so pretty that I worry for her everytime I see a man look at her. All of those Tesses is my daughter. — Rosamund Lupton

(at age thirteen) I think sharks smile like women dad. Like Jenny's smiling at you right now.
...
But have you ever noticed how porpoises smile like effeminate men? They're bi-sexual, you know. Me, I'd rather have sex with a porpoise than a shark. — William Rooney

I count myself well educated, for the admirable woman at the head of the school which I attended from the age of four and a half till I was thirteen and a half, was a born teacher in advance of her own times. — Catherine Helen Spence

There's a fine line between terrorists and revolutionaries, and on both sides of that line they want Kem and every slinger like him dead and to see Sling City and the arena themselves drifting aimlessly in scorched pieces through space. They see the games as a global distraction from the wars that have been raging for close to a decade now. The wrong side is winning, as it often does. The corporations and governments are lying to the people, as they often do. Kem never involved or invested himself in politics. Since the age of thirteen he's cared about three things: his team, winning, and being the best. You can call it selfish, or you can call it a reduced worldview. The — Matt Wallace

here was a Baptist church near their house, and at age twelve or thirteen, Kayne began to walk to it and attend services on a regular basis. She told me that one Sunday during the altar call, "I was just so drawn. I want to do this. For some reason, I started crying, and a lady came back to where I was sitting-I didn't come down; she saw me where I was sitting and came back-and started talking to me. She said, 'You want to go down?' and I said, 'Yes.' So she walked with me. — Susan M. Shaw

Zora was a woman of principle, an open atheist. At the age of thirteen, a priest had told her that animals had no souls, and she had said, "well then, fuck you, Pops," and walked out of church. — Tea Obreht

The nature of human beings never changes; it is immutable. The present generation of children and the present generation of young adults from the age of thirteen to eighteen is, therefore, no different from that of their great-great-grandparents. Political fads come and go; theories rise and fall; the scientific — Taylor Caldwell

By the age of thirteen, any blossoming girl knows the power she possesses over boys. By the time she's thirty she's come to realize men would stoop to fucking chickens under the right circumstances. — Jack Dancer

He was thirteen that year, the age when children splinter off and abandon the old loves. — Mark Costello

His only real financial failure came at the age of thirteen when, in an uncharacteristic error of judgement, he invested £200,000 of his own savings in wooden socks, an invention that never caught on as he had hoped. — Mark Jackman

I had become conscious of my physicality, aware of my presence and open to the ugly truths of the world. At the age of thirteen, I realised that there was a danger in innocence and beauty, and I could not live with both. — Tracey Emin

Sages tell us that the Torah tells us that until the age of thirteen, all of boy's sins are ascribed to his father. — Shalom Auslander

I think from the age of thirteen, I really wanted to be a producer and I've always thought that the producer was the top of the tree. — Jeff Lynne

Actually, I was more or less determined to be a theoretical physicist at the age of thirteen. — David Gross

They're engineers," she said. She was thinking, What did he expect? He must have dealt with engineers at GM. "Emotionally, they're all thirteen years old, stuck at the age just before boys stop playing with toys, because they've discovered girls. They're all still playing with toys. They have poor social skills, dress badly - but they're extremely intelligent and well trained, and they are very arrogant in their way. Outsiders are definitely not allowed to play. — Michael Crichton

There were nineteen years between my grandparents, and I was in a relationship for five years from the age of fifteen to twenty with a man who was thirteen years older than me who remains one of the loves of my life, and he passed away when I was twenty years old. — Kate Winslet

I haven't kept a diary since I was seventeen. I think it was soon after my baccalaureat that I gave it up for reasons I'm not sure of, because from the age of twelve or thirteen I had written one religiously... They were a record of what I had done when, down to the nearest minute. I think I held on to them as 'evidence' of some kind. They helped me to find my place in the world and, in a broader sense, to prove to myself that I really existed. I suppose I must have decided at some point that I no longer needed to do that, because I gave up writing a diary, stopped telling the story of my life and tried to just live it instead. — Antoine Laurain

(Officially the earliest age was eleven for officers' sons and thirteen for the rest, but no one took much notice of the regulation - seven-year-olds were not unknown.) Before — Patrick O'Brian

I was driving, which might have been unusual anywhere but here in the Kingdom of Hereford, which was unique in the Ununited Kingdoms for having driving tests based on maturity, not age. That explained why I'd had a license since I was thirteen, while some were still failing to make the grade at forty. — Jasper Fforde

I am still every age that I have been. Because I was once a child, I am always a child. Because I was once a searching adolescent, given to moods and ecstasies, these are still part of me, and always will be ... This does not mean that I ought to be trapped or enclosed in any of these ages ... the delayed adolescent, the childish adult, but that they are in me to be drawn on; to forget is a form of suicide ... Far too many people misunderstand what *putting away childish things* means, and think that forgetting what it is like to think and feel and touch and smell and taste and see and hear like a three-year-old or a thirteen-year-old or a twenty-three-year-old means being grownup. When I'm with these people I, like the kids, feel that if this is what it means to be a grown-up, then I don't ever want to be one. Instead of which, if I can retain a child's awareness and joy, and *be* fifty-one, then I will really learn what it means to be grownup. — Madeleine L'Engle

How old are you, anyway?"
"How old are you?"
"Seventeen."
I raise a brow.
"Almost. I'll be seventeen in two weeks. You?"
Part of me doesn't want to tell her. She'll be horrified. But part of me wants to know what she will do when she knows the truth. "How old do you think I am?"
She lifts a slender shoulder. "At first I thought maybe eighteen, but now I'm thinking at least nineteen. Maybe even twenty?"
"why's that?"
"You seem very ... experienced."
I nod. "You're close. Today's my birthday. I'm thirteen. — Darynda Jones

Thirteen years separate the death of her mother from that of her aunt.
And another thirteen passed between her mother's death and her grandmother's.
yes, exactly the same time lapse.
And all three died in almost exactly the same way.
A leap into the void.
Death has three different ages.
The girl, the mother, the grandmother.
So no age is worth living.
In the train that rolls toward the camp, Charlotte makes a calculation.
1940 + 13 = 1953.
So 1953 will be the year of her suicide.
If she doesn't die before that. — David Foenkinos

Whereupon, at the tender age of thirteen, I set upon the path of playing nothing but hookers. — Ida Lupino

I take it you don't believe in love at first sight." "Does anyone over the age of thirteen? Do you?" "I don't, no," Darcy said. "But I don't rule out for others what I haven't experienced firsthand. — Curtis Sittenfeld

I have a fetish," Kami claimed. "For scars," she added, and Jared's mouth quirked. His smile still looked incredulous, but in a different way. "Obviously my first choice would be Mr. Stearn, who was in World War II and is by all reports absolutely covered in scars. Hot, am I right? But alas, our love can never be."
"That's tragic," said Jared.
"He's like a hundred years old, I'd kill him with my enthusiasm," said Kami. "I couldn't live with myself. He's a hero who fought for our country. You'll have to do."
"I'm a little reassured," Jared told her. He laughed, a slow, wonderful sound, warm as the line of his body against hers. "But I'm mostly appalled. I had no idea of the massive age range my competition apparently fits into. Anyone from the age of thirteen to a hundred? — Sarah Rees Brennan

The highly spirited girl stood up to face her challengers & smiled.She had learnt from the age of thirteen, that what men wanted from young naked girls, was sex. And although the crafty Typhon had stipulated that she would be evaluated in five different areas, & the sixth, in accordance to his mood, all six only spelled sex differently.[MMT] — Nicholas Chong

It has been possible to trace historically back to a very early age the taxes which were imposed on medicines, spices and similar substances in German towns. Thus, for instance, one finds that in the year 1500, thirteen, in 1540, thirty-eight, and in 1708, already one hundred and twenty vegetable oils are mentioned. — Otto Wallach

His parents, Carswell had learned at a very young age, liked things that did what they were told, when they were told. And that didn't include headstrong felines. Or, as it turned out, thirteen-year-old boys. — Marissa Meyer

When I think of how we show faith, I cannot help but think of the example of my own father. I recall vividly how the spirit of missionary work came into my life. I was about thirteen years of age when my father received a call to go on a mission. — Ezra Taft Benson

The Bill of Life The Second Civil War, also known as "The Heartland War," was a long and bloody conflict fought over a single issue. To end the war, a set of constitutional amendments known as "The Bill of Life" was passed. It satisfied both the Pro-life and the Pro-choice armies. The Bill of Life states that human life may not be touched from the moment of conception until a child reaches the age of thirteen. However, between the ages of thirteen and eighteen, a parent may choose to retroactively "abort" a child . . . . . on the condition that the child's life doesn't "technically" end. The process by which a child is both terminated and yet kept alive is called "unwinding." Unwinding is now a common, and accepted practice in society. — Neal Shusterman

It was like seeing Bill Gates at age thirteen, times two. And half of him was wearing a cheerleader uniform. Yes, I know that's a weird image. — Jordan Sonnenblick

When I was thirteen, I had a nervous breakdown, and I was put into this grown-up mental hospital with all these 50-, 60-year-old men and women. This big, Victorian mental house. There were like five boys in there, all my age, looked after by this woman who was 22 or 23. And it was like "Empire of the Sun" meets "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest"-type of arrangement where you've got this young boy overcoming and becoming heroic in the face of this awful place. — Duncan Roy

Until the age of thirteen, I tortured the waiting worlds of book illustration and professional football by shilly-shallying over which of them was going to get the benefit of my inestimable talents. — Glen Duncan

As a writer, politician, scientist, and businessman, [Ben] Franklin had few equals among the educated of his day-though he left school at ten. ( ... )Boys like Andrew Carnegie who begged his mother not to send him to school and was well on his way to immortality and fortune at the age of thirteen, would be referred today for psychological counseling; Thomas Edison would find himself in Special Ed until his peculiar genius had been sufficiently tamed. — John Taylor Gatto

The mediocre mind has no capacity for understanding. It is stuck somewhere near thirteen years in its mental age, or even below it. The person may be forty, fifty, seventy years old - that does not matter, that is the physical age. He has been growing old, but he has not been growing up. You should note the distinction. Growing old, every animal does. Growing up, only a few human beings manage. — Rajneesh