Teen Years Quotes & Sayings

Compliant children are very easily led when they are young, because they thrive on approval and pleasing adults. They are just aseasily led in their teen years, because they still seek the same two things: approval and the pleasing their peers. Strong-willed children are never easily led by anybody
not by you, but also not by their peers. So celebrate your child's strength of will throughout the early years ... and know that the independent thinking you are fostering will serve him well in the critical years to come. — Barbara Coloroso

To all those mothers and fathers who are struggling with teen-agers, I say, just be patient: even though it looks like you can't do anything right for a number of years, parents become popular again when kids reach 20. — Marian Wright Edelman

I spent most of my teen years trying to figure out the rules of life, theories for why things happened, why people behaved as they did, and mostly I came to the conclusion that either there were no rules, or the rules sucked. Reading science fiction wasn't about imagining myself into some more exciting life filled with adventure, it was about finding a world where things worked the way I wanted them to. — Robin Wasserman

The thing that got me through the worst of my teen years was running and the piano. — Deborah Reber

I got through my teen years by being a bit of a clown. — Diane Cilento

It's the universal feeling that we all are alone - that we're all different. I think the movie's one resounding theme is that everybody feels the same, and we're all alone together. Some people come up to me on the street and thank me for helping them get through their teen years. — Molly Ringwald

I actually love writing for teens best. I had such an awful time in my own teen years - I love having the chance to relive them through my fiction. — Meg Cabot

I believed in God my whole life, and then strayed away from it in my teen-age years, until recently. — Andy Dick

I instinctively dress a bit tougher because I've spent a lot of time in the U.S. and I realised there was a certain image projected of me here. I've always been an absolute rebel. When I was in my teen years I had piercings and wore all black. — Ellie Goulding

The teen years are not a vacation from responsibility," we had told the columnist. "They are the training ground of future leaders who dare to be responsible — Alex Harris

At the age of 16 I was already dreaming of having a baby because I felt myself to be an adult, but my mum forbid it. Right now, I feel like a teenager and I want to have fun for one or two more years before starting a family. — Milla Jovovich

I was raised a Catholic as a boy and went to a Catholic boys' high school, a private school, and kind of drifted away, candidly, in my latter teen years. I consider myself deeply spiritual but not in an institutional, religious kind of a way. In Catholicism, we're surrounded by these images of martyrdom and doing penance and doing some suffering to achieve what you're trying to achieve. And I certainly embedded that in my psyche and I have lived that very effectively. — James Balog

According to Barna surveys, 61 percent of today's youth had been churched at one point during their teen years but are now spiritually disengaged. — Philip Yancey

Most often, those who've been in the well are those most likely to pull others out of the well ... When Jack Canaday was twelve years old he was once in the well ... Now, twenty-one years later, Jack has an opportunity to reach down and help others out of the well ... — Randolph Randy Camp

I grew up in Detroit. I was a teen father. I lived on welfare for three years. I have a brother serving life in prison, though I believe he's innocent. — Michael Eric Dyson

During my teen years, for Halloween, I went as a registered voter. — Martha Plimpton

I couldn't shake the feeling that you had taken something of mine. Something you had no right to. It's lingered over the years, that all-consuming feeling. And I feel it now. What are you hiding, Axton? What do you have that's mine?"

— Siobhan Davis

This typewriter is the only one that has listened to me throughout the years, the only one who wants to know the girl beneath my layers. — Tessa Emily Hall

Since my teen years I was interested in martial arts. — Tony Visconti

Everything was brighter and more colorful in those years, as if my childhood was ending in an explosion of unreal passion that made my life feel sacred and holy. — Roman Payne

Perhaps the most dramatic effect of legalized abortion, however, and one that would take years to reveal itself, was its impact on crime. In the early 1990s, just as the first cohort of children born after Roe v. Wade was hitting its late teen years - the years during which young men enter their criminal prime - the rate of crime began to fall. What this cohort was missing, of course, were the children who stood the greatest chance of becoming criminals. And the crime rate continued to fall as an entire generation came of age minus the children whose mothers had not wanted to bring a child into the world. Legalized abortion led to less unwantedness; unwantedness leads to high crime; legalized abortion, therefore, led to less crime. — Steven D. Levitt

Certain elements of teen life that, 10 years ago, were very important to me still, are becoming less so as I get older. I mean, I've kinda gotten over, I guess I'm saying, the fact that I had trouble getting a date for the prom. — Matthew Tobin Anderson

The first time I got pregnant, I was a young girl - I was 17 years old. Although I knew right away that I wanted to keep my child, being a pregnant teen was an extremely scary experience for me. Luckily, my family and friends were very supportive and were there for me every step of the way. — Paula Garces

You've spent two years at the same school as Mina, hardly talking to her, never even realizing she is alive. Then she goes and does something crazy, against my wishes. She placed her own life in danger to save yours." Her face became very still. "Now, because of those actions, our whole family has to live with the consequences. You now feel obligated to help her, like she did you. I get that, I really do. But what gives you the right to question our actions and lifestyle?" Silence filled the kitchen. Mina held her breath, afraid to move. Brody straightened in his seat and swallowed slowly. Sara brushed her hands over her forehead in defeat. "You're enamored. That's it. In another week or so, you will wake up, and this will all be a dream. You will forget that Mina ever even saved your life. She will go back to being my clumsy, forgotten, outcast teen daughter, and you will go back to ruling the school and dating the head cheerleader. — Chanda Hahn

Does one mistake, no matter how horrific it is, override years of love and support? Replace the myriad of ways he protected me and eliminate how far he was prepared to go to keep me safe? When I told him I loved him in that previous lifetime, was it so flimsy that I'd turn my back on him when he needs me the most? I don't need anyone else to answer those questions for me.
I know it doesn't.
I may not love him in the same way, but I will not abandon him.
I will not give up on him. — Siobhan Davis

But with Naseem and me, it was like we had never known each other at all. It's a cruel, skewered ecosystem in which a high school student exists. I'm not trying to justify it. Things that at the time seem entirely logical, defensible even, can make a person years later ashamed. Not necessarily of acts one has perpetrated, but omissions of basic decency. Averted eyes, abruptly ended conversations, unextended offers to include. Such things are scythes across the backs of even the most normal teens. And Naseem, it was generally acknowledged, was not your most normal teen. — Ron Parsons

When I was growing up, particularly during puberty in my teen years, I was so miserable because I elicited so much teasing and meanness from my teenage cohorts. — Linda Hunt

Many offenders are tracked for prison at early ages, labeled as criminals in their teen years, and then shuttled from their decrepit, underfunded inner city schools to brand-new, high-tech prisons. — Michelle Alexander

Some of my favourites ... there's the classics like Blur and Oasis and Pulp, Suede and The Charlatans, The La's, The Smiths, The Cure, stuff like that. That was a huge part of my teen-years and bands I still listen to right through to this day, but it had a huge bearing on me as a teen and it was some of my favourite music, and is still to this day some of my favourite music. — Mikey Way

Most of the girls I've met since moving here have failed to ignite any modicum of enduring interest. Of course, I've dated; I'm seventeen years old and as horny as the next guy. — Siobhan Davis

I was sickly as a child and gravitated to books and drawing. During my early teen years, I spent hundreds of hours at my window, sketching neighborhood children at play. I sketched and listened, and those notebooks became the fertile field of my work later on. There is not a book I have written or a picture I have drawn that does not, in some way, owe them its existence. — Maurice Sendak

In my teen years leading up to the Olympics, I loved having the excuse to skip out on parties because of skating. Partying wasn't my thing anyway. Mostly I hung out with other skaters. We were all buddies, so it's not like I missed out on socializing. I was really enjoying myself. — Dorothy Hamill

I tend to like writing long stories in comics. I worked on 'Flash,' 'Teen Titans' and 'JSA' for years. I always like diving into characters. — Geoff Johns

Before my teen years, I was losing my hearing pretty quickly, and I was getting very, very angry. I was beginning to become an angry person because of that. — Evelyn Glennie

It hasn't been until the last couple years that I've started playing close to my age. But it's fun playing the younger roles because it takes you back to the teen years. — Kerr Smith

I feel, as an adult, I'm very similar to how I was as a pre-teen. Maybe it's a case of arrested development, but I feel like it's easy to slip back into those shoes, and I feel like if we were all magically transported back to our middle school years, we'd all act like we did in middle school. — Jeff Kinney

I remember hearing once that good girls don't get caught. I think that's sort of a lot of what my teen years were like. — Anna Kendrick

I spent the first fourteen years of my life convinced that my looks were hideous. Adolescence is painful for everyone, I know, but mine was plain weird. — Uma Thurman

I will be able to look back on my teen years as spent on a television set just having the biggest bunch of fun. — Sophie Turner

Superheroes are mostly aimed at young teen-age males concerned with their manhood. The medium will have to address itself more to content ... I see 22 year olds draw massive Schwarzenegger types, outfitted with metal studs, pressing a mostly naked woman to their breastplates. And I think Poor girl, thats got to be cold. — Will Eisner

A dark voice within warned him to stop, but Aaron brushed it off. He flashed Holden a patronizing smile. "All right, then. Why not here? I have no problem giving you a fair fight, considering our history."

Slowly Holden relaxed his arms. There was a dark glimpse of metal, and then he took quick aim with his right hand. The short, lonely barrel of a gun stared Aaron in the eye. Even in his surprised state, Aaron could see what he was up against. An innocuous-looking Remington 1911, its wood-grip base outdated in style, but its precision and reliability lauded throughout the years.

"Considering our history," Holden said through his teeth, "I have no interest in fair. — Deidre Huesmann

She had been waiting for someone to notice her, like, really notice her. She felt that that was the key, that she would go from the duck to the swan the minute someone recognized her potential. And they would look into her like they were trying to pierce her eyes with theirs, like they were trying to make her heart stop, and the whole world would become background noise and she would take her first breath after all of these years of nothing but existing. It would be like a coronation, or a star exploding, and then she would be born. She would be alive, and she would be loved. — Rose Fall

There's a bit of a local legend about a jet heart that has turned up over the years," Flynn said. "Any time it turns up, strange things happen. — Teresa Flavin

Part of the post-apocalyptic, dystopian trend is that it seems to go hand in hand with young adult novels. Maybe that's because it's not simply the adults who are aware of the current crisis. Teens are the ones who are being told, again and again, that their futures are in jeopardy. The teen years can feel dystopian even in the best of times. But I don't think we realize how much pressure and feeling of doom we're passing down to our teens. — Julianna Baggott

1970 - A YEAR with a whole new sound to it - came along, and that put an end to my teen years. Now I could step ahead into a whole new swamp. — Haruki Murakami

People come out to rough me up because they think I'm not going to play well. And maybe when I was in my teen years it worked well. But I'm used to it now. — Lauren Jackson

My high school years were fun and frustrating, typical of the teen years. The most important accomplishment was meeting my wife, Ruth. — Alan J. Heeger

A lot of people in their 30's get nostalgic for their teen years. Then they get jobs in TV, become bitter and jaded and prematurely old. Then they turn their nostalgia into great television. — Craig Ferguson

K. hung his arm around my neck. It was a casual gesture but one I wasn't used to, and I was almost frightened by the happiness that overtook me, that filled me up and charged me and at the same time carried a thread; it was too unrestrained, there was nothing to keep it in check. I felt solid again as I walked with him, more certain of myself than I had been for years, with his arm around my neck and my own slung at his waist We knocked against each other but what did it matter, there was no one to see us, we moved with an awkward freedom but a freedom nonetheless. — Garth Greenwell

I remember realizing, when I did Little Women [1994], that that was the only time girls that age were being written about. It was always boys - from David Copperfield to Lord of the Flies to Holden Caulfield. There were never young women going through adolescence or teen years; there were only little girls. — Winona Ryder

When I started out as a music journalist, at the end of the 1980s, it was generally assumed that we were living through the lamest music era the world would ever see. But those were also the years when hip-hop exploded, beatbox disco soared, indie rock took off, and new wave invented a language of teen angst. — Rob Sheffield

I just fell into the job as a fashion editor at a teen magazine. I was there for two years, and I left there as a senior fashion editor at the age of 25. — Rachel Zoe

I work in a restaurant in an airport in Taiwan. I am eighteen years old and I don't like my job because everyone gets on planes and leaves. And I want to leave too. — Kerem Mermutlu

My teenage years were exactly what they were supposed to be. Everybody has their own path. It's laid out for you. It's just up to you to walk it. — Justin Timberlake

I don't understand how teens in this generation stress being in a relationship/love more than adults do about their future. She's testing him to see if he's loyal, he's testing her to see if she's after money. So, basically it's a messed up-stressed-testing generation. Love has been blown so far out of proportion I reckon. The stress surrounding the single sentence 'I love you' is saddening. Relax!!! You're young! Your teen years are supposed to be fun. You have your whole lives ahead to find the right one. Just sit back, chill and live life the way it comes. — Manasa Rao

I was a big fan of black gospel. As a kid, there were black groups I sang with from my teen years to my early 20s. — Cory Wells

I wouldn't say I'm stuck in my adolescence, but I think, like a lot of people, I carry my teen years with me. I feel really in touch with those feelings, and how intense and complicated life seems in those years. — Sara Zarr

A teen boy's wet dream, right here, right in front of him. Elliott closed his eyes, trying to reason with his raging erection, which argued, Come on, come on, it's been fifty years. — Joss Ware

He Is looking at me through the smoke, across the fence. He never takes his eyes off me. His hair Is a crown of leaves, of thorns, of flames. His eyes are blazing with light, more light than all the lights in every city in the whole world, more light than we could ever invent If we had ten thousand billion years. — Lauren Oliver

I think I'm also more open to other writers being present and listening to other opinions, whereas before I was going through my angsty teen years while making records. — Michelle Branch

The thing is, if you're an ugly goon when you're 15, you're an ugly goon for the rest of your life - until the day you die. You're always a goon, even if lots of years go by, even if you get married and have a kid, even if you're more successful than you ever thought you'd be in your wildest dreams. You're still that same goon who everybody laughed at. It never changes. — David Handler

In my early teen years, I wanted to become a vet. That was my plan. I worked as a veterinarian's assistant for a couple of summers. — Dennis Quaid

Getting into my teen years, I was filled with so much shame and pain that I got really involved with drugs and alcohol. I was hanging out with the wrong people and getting involved in the wrong relationships and everything just sort of spun out of control. — Pattie Mallette

We cannot rely on trial-and-error approaches to deal with existential risks ... We need to vastly increase our investment in developing specific defensive technologies ... We are at the critical stage today for biotechnology, and we will reach the stage where we need to directly implement defensive technologies for nanotechnology during the late teen years of this century ... A self-replicating pathogen, whether biological or nanotechnology based, could destroy our civilization in a matter of days or weeks. — Ray Kurzweil

I was eleven, then I was sixteen. Though no honors came my way, those were the lovely years. — Bernard M. Baruch

(about her teen years) My admirers all said the same thing in different ways. It was my fault, their wanting to kiss and hug me. — Marilyn Monroe

Across the country, red states are poorer and have more teen mothers, more divorce, worse health, more obesity, more trauma-related deaths, more low-birth-weight babies, and lower school enrollment. On average, people in red states die five years earlier than people in blue states. Indeed, the gap in life expectancy between Louisiana (75.7) and Connecticut (80.8) is the same as that between the United States and Nicaragua. Red states suffer more in another highly important but little-known way, one that speaks to the very biological self-interest in health and life: industrial pollution. — Arlie Russell Hochschild

But I'd known when I started this whole thing that we were different in this important way: Isabel had spent her teen years caring who touched her, and I hadn't. — Maggie Stiefvater

I have known many people who were seduced as children by same-sex partners and then spent their teen years being gay, and then found their way back to heterosexuality as adults. — Nell Zink

There's a girl calm people don't know about. It's a girl teen standstill. A motionless peace. It doesn't come from anywhere but inside us, and it only lasts for a few years. It's born from being a not woman yet. It's free flowing and invisible. It's the eye of the violent storm you call my teenage daughter. In this place we are undisturbed by all the moronic things you think about us. Our voices like rain falling. We are serene. Smooth. With more perfect hair and skin than you will ever again know. Daughters of Eve. — Lidia Yuknavitch

Yeah, I spent my teen years in West Virginia, and when I was a kid, in Louisiana. I definitely have that exposure to two different sorts of rural: the South and Appalachia. — Sam Trammell

The eighties were my teen years, so the GoGos are sort of a touchstone. — Corin Tucker

I was a happy kid up until I hit the teen years. — Rick Springfield

I'm a comic nerd. I'm a former serious collector for much of my childhood and early teen years I wanted to draw underground comics. — Anthony Bourdain

What kind of life is that? Do you know? Do you? Because I know. I lived that life. For years I lived it. Without you. And I've never been more miserable. I'd rather fight everyday to keep you near me than have you walk away. I'd rather pay that price, Max. I'm not afraid to pay it. I can't believe you're standing here telling me that you are."
~Layla to Max; TORN — Laney McMann

In my teen years and early twenties I was really interested in this fellaheen worlds that, of course, Kerouac invokes and wanting to go below the border and wanting to get to these other places or interstices of the culture where you were encountering the realities of these other kinds of cultures, experiences, language, I think of jazz culture of course. — Anne Waldman

My father had been my Moses, bringing me to life. Then my grandfather became my Joshua, carrying me through my childhood and teen years into adulthood. — Wes Moore

During my teen years, I was real emotional. I could be really up or down. — Andie MacDowell

How do you know I'm any different from the broken, beaten slave you found over seven years ago? - Corin — Claire M. Banschbach

My interest was magic, believe it or not. I became an amateur magician and did something like 400 magic shows through my teen years. — David Pogue

I think I'm trouble-adjacent. I remember hearing once that good girls don't get caught. I think that's sort of a lot of what my teen years were like. I skirted the stuff that other kids were doing because the idea of actually getting in trouble was not appealing to me, but I still wanted to have adventures. — Anna Kendrick

Robin McKinley's 'The Blue Sword' was a defining book of my teen years, and I'd love to have more books like that in the world. — Carrie Vaughn

I have been in teen shows for years, so doing that stuff - kissing - is kind of commonplace and not a big deal. It was way more cool just because it was Meg Ryan. — Adam Brody

In teen years, people yearned to be liked; in their twenties, to be impressive; in their thirties, to be needed — Tom Rachman

I think anybody who's doing work in their teen years on TV or in the movies, you're a teen idol by default. — Jason Bateman

dJack be nimble,
Jack be quick,
Jack forgot to check if the ice was thick.
Emma was still,
Emma was late,
Emma's brother is now part of the lake.
Time has passed,
Time has gone,
Time brought Jack back wrong.
He was solemn,
He was brave,
He left his coat on Emma's grave.
Emma was sad,
Emma was scared,
But she knew inside that Jack really cared.
Jack was lost,
Jack had forgot,
That he had a story before the plot.
Jack had wondered,
Jack had fought,
Jack had remembered what he had forgot.
I hope you dream.
I hope you wonder.
I hope you have fun because this is done.
Keep believing everyone.
Jack be fearless,
Jack be bold,
Jack drowned when he was 17 years old. — William Joyce

it's a fitting salute to a heroine who rose over bad costumes and unflattering cinematography (remember those days of relentless soft-focus?) to become the sole reason many of us watched Hindi films at one time. And all these years on, Madhuri Dixit still makes it look as easy as ek, do, teen. — Baradwaj Rangan

For me, the teen years were all about searching for a place for myself, wondering why I seemed so different than everyone else, wondering especially why no one could look past the surface and figure out who I really was underneath. — Robin Wasserman

I progressed through so many different styles of music through my teen years, both as a player and a vocalist, particularly the jazz and pop of the early 20th Century. — Jeff Healey

But here I am at this moment, a thirty-four-year-old geek, and against my will and against my reason (although, okay, not against my character), I still want that fucking Cinderella story for myself.
More than an amazing, no-one-else-on-the-planet-knows-this secret.
More than anything else.
I want that happily-ever-after ending I imagined, as a teen, I'd get someday. That daydream I held on to as my prize for surviving those sucky years of adolescence.
Dammit, I deserve that ending.
It's just that, if I'm truly honest with myself, I can no longer tell if it's Sam, specifically, I want or if it's the nearly two-decade-old fantasy featuring him as the heroic lead.
So, at the last second, I cop out. — Marilyn Brant

I wrote when I was a young teen, but I didn't put an eye on the available markets until I was seventeen. The next ten years felt like a self-centered experiment in personal abuse. — Robert Reed

As children and into our tumultuous teen years, we feel our way through the world. We may be told our intuition is wrong by peers and family. We act on our intuition and are quieted, shushed, or made fun of. In abusive situations, children raise their voice in objection and are silenced by adults who are supposedly know better. Our childhood intuition is stuffed down, ignored or suppressed. When you lie to a child, you send the message that their intuition is worthless and unreliable. This same child grows into adulthood questioning and doubting themselves. One of the most empowering things you can do is start to heal, trust and cultivate your intuition. You have the ability to reignite that candle inside yourself. You can reclaim your intuitive facilities. To do so is your birthright. — Sasha Graham

I cohabited for 20 years with my longtime husband and father of my two now-teen daughters in a stable family household. — Sandra Tsing Loh

In the year 1819 an act of Parliament was proposed limiting the labor of children nine years of age to four-teen hours a day. This would seem to have been a reasonable provision, likely to have won the approval of Christ; yet the bill was violently opposed by Christian employers, backed by Christian clergymen. It was interfering with freedom of contract, and therefore with the will of Providence; it was anathema to an established Church, whose function was in 1819, as it is in 1918, and was in 1918 B. C., to teach the divine origin and sanction of the prevailing economic order. — Upton Sinclair

At just ten years old, I told myself not to fall in love. Not again. Not ever. — Melissa M. Futrell