Your 20s Your 30s Quotes & Sayings

If you must know, my parents came from pretty hardscrabble backgrounds in the southern Midwest. I certainly didn't grow up poor, but I did spend my 20s and early 30s juggling temp jobs and choking on massive student-loan debt. — Meghan Daum

I bought tiny infant onesies while still in college and compiled a killer toy collection throughout my 20s and 30s. — Kara Swisher

And I can't tell you how many women from a certain age group - they would be in their 30s now, 20s and 30s - tell me about how I was their role model when they were young girls. — Lindsay Wagner

The video for 'Whatever' is kind of a documentary in a way. It's showing that love can last. Not just in your early 20s or your late 30s, but in your 50s, 60s and 70s. There's an awful myth out there that when you get married, love and lovemaking fade. It's not true. — Jill Scott

Being a father at a later age is different from when I had my other two daughters when I was in my 20s and 30s. If you're in your 60s and you're with the kid every day, you're dealing with the mind of a child, so it opens up that childishness in you again. — Martin Scorsese

The thing with playing live is, most of the audience is in their 20s and 30s. If you're older than that, you don't tend to go out to shows anymore. So it's good if you can attract a younger audience because they've got the energy to get up off the sofa and go out. — Colin Hay

In what might come as a surprise to religious conservatives and other proponents of early marriage, Mintz reports that apart from the period following World War II, most Americans did not wed until their mid- or even late 20s or early 30s. — Anonymous

When you look at every studio in the '20s or '30s, from Louis B. Mayer to Jack Warner, you see people who started with one plan and quickly shifted gears to adapt to a changing world. One of my favorite stories is that Walt Disney mortgaged his house to make 'Snow White.' He saw there was a real opportunity to change the world. — Ryan Kavanaugh

In your 20s, you learn. In your 30s, you earn. — Frank Perdue

In their 20s, women try to be somebody they're not and try to turn themselves into something different. Now I'm in my 30s; I'm very happy with who I am. — Shakira

My dad was all about music. He was a musician, leading a band when I was born. His band was active all through the 40s. He'd started it in the late 20s and 30s. According to the scrapbook, his band was doing quite well around the Boston area. During the Depression they were on radio. It was a jazz-oriented band. He was a trumpet player, and he wrote and arranged for the band. He taught me how to play the piano and read music, and taught me what he knew of standard tunes and so forth. It was a fantastic way to come up in music. — Chick Corea

Parts of my 20s and 30s have gone by in a flash but my childhood is with me all the time. — Sara Sheridan

A lot of high school students on TV and in Broadway are played by people in their late 20s and even early 30s. That seems weird to me. — Ansel Elgort

When I started my own practice, I was criticized, not because I was doing product design but because, like Le Corbusier, I was insisting on paintings in all of my buildings. I would paint wall murals in the houses that I designed, just as he did in the '20s and '30s. — Michael Graves

When you're in your 20s, your 30s, even, you have - at least, I had - vast ambitions, and you sit around mooning about these things, and you're depressed, because you haven't done them. And it takes you a long time to come to the realization that if you can't be John Updike, well, then, you can't. — Garrison Keillor

A lot of people say I've missed out on a lot because I started acting at such a young age. What's so obvious to me is that I actually was really lucky. I gained a lot and I got a head start in what I wanted to do in life. A lot of people in their late 20s, early 30s are just beginning to figure out where they want to go. — Matt Dillon

There's so many things that mattered so much in my 20s and 30s that don't matter now. — Candace Bushnell

I bent my head over a stove in my early 20s and picked it up in my 30s. — Alexandra Guarnaschelli

Visually I've always liked the 20s 30s for film. I do these because I like the music. I like the clothes. I like the way the women and the guys look. There are soldiers and sailors and gangsters with the machine guns in their violin cases. It's a very colorful era of New York, full of great theater and great nightclubs and great jazz. — Woody Allen

We can't surrender to the culture. We've minimized the role of fathers, so we've created a generation of barbarians, children who become men without growing up. They stay in boyhood through their 20s and 30s, sometimes their whole lives. They think of themselves first, indulge in pornography, do what they feel like, leave their wives, and culture, and churches to raise their children. — Randy Alcorn

I was heavy as a kid. I mean, I kind of got it together for a while there in my 20s and early 30s. — Jason Alexander

Though all the daughters eventually succeeded in escaping from their families, they felt, even at this time of the interview (while in their 20s and 30s) that they would never be safe with their fathers, and that they would have to defend themselves as long as their fathers lived. — Judith Lewis Herman

In your 20s, you feel like you're indestructible ... In your 30s, you think ... I'll be around here a little longer, so I'm going to take better care of myself. — John Belushi

When I started acting in the film industry when I was 16 years old, in 1980, I was going to all the revival theaters in Los Angeles. They were playing mostly films from the '60s and '70s, some from the early '20s and '30s, before that Hays commission. Those films did question things a lot, and there definitely was a switch in 1934. You can see very distinctly in 1934, it's harder to understand what the real culture was. Films made before 1934, you can really kind of see the racism, sexism, drug use, etc. that was going on at that time. And then it was all stopped. — Crispin Glover

I think obviously there's a core of who you are, and as you get older, you become more aware of what behavior is immutable. For a long time, I felt there was a deep separation between the person I was as a teenager and the person I was in my 20s and early 30s . — Seth

I'd love to go back to Europe in the '20s and '30s, for the beginning of the Psychoanalytic Movement, and Freud and Jung, and all that was going on with discoveries in quantum physics. The whole nature of reality was changing and being challenged. — Michael Sheen

We're in crisis mode as black actresses. It's not only in the sheer number of roles that are offered and that are out there, but the quality of the roles. The quality - and therein lies the problem. We're in deprivation mode because me, Alfre and Phylicia, we're in the same category. Whereas if you take a Caucasian actress, you have the one who are the teens, in their 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s - they're all different. There are roles for each of them. But you only have two or three categories for black actresses. — Viola Davis

The only time I would like to see was the 20s and 30s in America because I love the music and the style and the optimism, I wanted to see New York being built. I wanted to see all that, you know. — Billy Connolly

Life flies by, and it's easy to get lost in the blur. In adolescence, it's 'How do I fit in?' In your 20s, it's 'What do I want to do?' In your 30s, 'Is this what I'm meant to do?' I think the trick is living the questions. Not worrying so much about what's ahead but rather sitting in the grey area - being OK with where you are. — Chris Pine

My family was musical on both sides. My father's family had a famous flautist and a classical pianist. My mother won a contest to be Shirley Temple's double - she was the diva of the family. At 8, I learned how to play guitar. I used to play songs from the '20s, '30s and '40s in the kitchen for my grandmother. — Gloria Estefan

In the 20s, you were a face. And that was enough. In the 30s, you also had to be a voice. And your voice had to match your face, if you can imagine that. — Joan Blondell

Ruby: ... What's so good about being 20? I call them the materialist years. The years we get distracted by all the bullshit. Then we cop on when we hit our 30s and spend those years trying to make up for the 20s. But your 40s? Those years are for enjoying it.
Rosie: Hmmm good point. What are the 50s for?
Ruby: Fixing what you fucked up in your 40s.
Rosie: Great. Looking forward to it. — Cecelia Ahern

I teach one semester a year, and this year I'm just teaching one course during that semester, a writing workshop for older students in their late 20s and early 30s, people in our graduate program who are already working on a manuscript and trying to bring it to completion. — Tobias Wolff

And my life for the first - you know, when I was in my 20s and 30s, I had my career, and I traveled the world, I lived out of a suitcase. I stayed up until dawn. I did all of those things that were very exciting. — Cheryl Tiegs

Germany's hierarchical reverence for seniority may have something to do with the fact that everything here happens relatively late. Germans start school at six, graduate in their late 20s, and get their first proper jobs in their 30s. Adolescence can go on a long time. It is rare for anyone to achieve responsibility before their 50s. — Luke Harding

There's nothing more fun than putting on an old costume and jewelry and being in a house that's decorated from the '20s or '30s or whatever. — Mariana Klaveno

Of course you do things differently in your 30s and 40s than in your 20s. — Michael Mina

In your 20s, you're checking your bank account to make sure you're not broke. In your 30s, you're looking at yourself and realizing you're broken. — Paul Rust

If Broadway musicals were as popular as they were in the 20s, 30s, and 40s, then people like Sufjan Stevens and Iron & Wine would be writing for Broadway, which would be amazing. As it stands, it's the worst stuff that's mired in pop music. — Colin Meloy

My 20s were a time where I made it; my 30s were when I was away, confused, and trying to figure it all out. — Pauly Shore

You have to be prepared to give creative work 150%. I hear a lot of young people talking about life/work balance, which I think is great when you're in your 30s. If you're in your 20s and already talking about that, I don't think you will achieve your goals. If you really want to build a powerful career, and make an impact, then you have to be prepared to put in blood, sweat, and tears. — Ellen Lupton

What I do want is to be transparent about where I am and how I got here. I don't like the cone of silence - it didn't do me any favors in my 20s or 30s, and I don't see it doing much for other women, either. — Rachel Sklar

When I was in my 20s, I used to go crazy. I used to work out two or three hours a day, like cycling; I was never anorexic, just picky. When I was in my 30s, I'd go back and forth, now that I'm 41, I'm like, 'Whatever, man!' For the most part, I just do a regular workout. — Justina Machado

If anything, when you're in your late 20s, early 30s, and then mid-30s, you're getting less attractive. — Rob McElhenney

When you were growing up in the 30s, 20s, of course the 40s, all black people at least in the Washington, D.C., area were required to live among themselves. — Ed Smith

It's no accident that most ads are pitched to people in their 20s and 30s. Not only are they so much cuter than their elders...but they are less likely to have gone through the transformative process of cleaning out their deceased parents' stuff. Once you go through that, you can never look at *your* stuff in the same way. You start to look at your stuff a little postmortemistically. If you've lived more than two decades as an adult consumer, you probably have quite the accumulation, even if you're not a hoarder...I'm not saying I never buy stuff, because I absolutely do. Maybe I'm less naive about the joys of accumulation. — Roz Chast

Each decade, I've lived in that decade, so I could easily shed the '20s, the '30s, the '40s. — Francesca Annis

The second wave is now in their late 20s and 30s. They have made the transition to life on Earth much more easily than the first wave. The second wave souls tend to work behind the scenes, often on their own, creating little or no Karma. In the sessions I conduct as a hypnotist, they have been described as antennas that unconsciously channel energy onto the Earth. They do not have to do anything; they just have to be. Their energy affects everyone they come into contact with. Their paradox is they are supposed to be sharing their energy, but they do not like being around people. — Dolores Cannon

The fact that you couldn't see Alfred Hitchcock's first film The Mountain Eagle, or that you couldn't see so many of F.W. Murnau's masterpieces, or that you couldn't see so many of Oscar Micheaux's really intriguing race melodramas, made with fierce independent spirit against all odds in '20s and '30s America. That stuff haunted me. They really did bring to life a sense of 20th Century history: cultural history, pop history, gender politics and race politics, socio economic history, all that stuff. It was bracing and instructive. — Guy Maddin

If you're paralyzing your face in your 20s and 30s, you're not exercising the muscles that give it strength. My feeling is, laugh, cry, move your face. — Salma Hayek

When you're in your 20s, you're a little more carefree; you're single. You have a very different way of looking at the world and experiencing the world. But later in your 30s, when you have children, a career, career obstacles, mortgages, car payments and relationships, you have to negotiate; that's a very different life. — Melissa De Sousa

The idea of trust-fund guys who live in Brooklyn in their 30s is really interesting to me. There's a time and a place where that kind of bohemian lifestyle is appropriate, soon after college, in your 20s. But there are people still living that many years later; they haven't evolved to the next phase. — Tim Heidecker

When I was in my 20s and 30s, there was such a variety and diversity of types of films that you could see. So many of them were really more about the human condition and about relationships between people, and they were smaller films that had a much greater impact on me as a human being. — Karen Allen

I probably spent the first 20 years of my life wanting to be as American as possible. Through my 20s, and into my 30s, I began to become aware of how so much of my art and architecture has a decidedly Eastern character. — Maya Lin

Maybe something that's acceptable in your teens or 20s is unacceptable in your 30s or 40s. — Eva Mendes

In the '20s and '30s, there were these musicals either set on college campuses or based on classical stories, so any of the Rodgers and Hart musicals certainly influenced me. I was definitely influenced by any of the 'Porgy' songs; I was influenced by 'American Pie.' — Douglas Carter Beane

Electric red hair is more for, like, people in their 20s and early 30s. — Scott Weiland

It's so funny the world we live in now. The years where you are most fertile, those are also the fertile years for career and personal growth. And so you're not encouraged to get pregnant in your 20s. But the 30s are when the biology kind of has you by the ovaries, so to speak. — Staceyann Chin

I was interested about how relationships change as you get older. You are great friends in your 20s. In your 30s, you get married. Your 40s are all about your kids. In your 50s, you get divorced, and your friendships become primary again. — Hanya Yanagihara

Alcohol didn't cause the high crime rates of the '20s and '30s, Prohibition did. And drugs do not cause today's alarming crime rates, but drug prohibition does. — James Carriger Paine

My grandfather played a mandolin, so I got my hands on that. Then on down to a banjo, and I found I couldn't play any kind of soft or mournful music with that so I took up the fiddle in my late 20s or early 30s - and that was far too late. But it keeps me off the streets. It has been a love of mine since I was 17 maybe. — Brendan Gleeson

I never considered myself an Americana artist, but I'm a huge fan of old-time music from the States, the recordings that were made in the '20s and '30s. Trying to chase down the exact stylistic trappings of that stuff always felt like a dead end. That spirit of directness and economy, but also the poetic pungency of the writing and almost ugly, or raw, performance - all that seemed like the real message. I've just tried to somehow stay true to that feeling. — Will Sheff

There was a time in my late teens and early 20s where I was motivated by this wanting to get out, to prove to the world that I had something to offer - that kind of youthful spirit, where maybe I had my eye on fame and fortune. I mellowed out in my late 20s and now that I'm in my early 30s, I'm coming to peace with it. — Lissie

In 'Twice Born' I play my character in her 20s, 30s and 50s. For the fifty year old scenes, I had some prosthetics; it was interesting to see how I'm going to look when I'm fifty-five or so. I actually saw similarities between my grandmothers and my mother. — Penelope Cruz

When I was going to gay bars in my 20s and 30s, the older guys there explained to me that the police would occasionally raid these places and march the clients out, load them onto paddy wagons, drive them down to the station, photograph them, fingerprint them and put their names on a list. They were doing nothing wrong, and it was criminalized. — George Takei

When you are in your 20s and you're not married with kids, you're having fun. But when you're in your 30s and you're not married and don't have kids, you begin to develop a Peter Pan complex. As you grow older, you have more responsibilities and you have to step up to them. — Ben Affleck

I deal with guys in their 20s and early 30s who are presidents of companies, who are movie directors. — Peter Criss

A healthy love life is not and should not be the preserve of those in their 20s and 30s. It's important at all ages. — Jerry Hall

I was blessed in the sense that I got handed so much early on in life. I got a lot of the things people go through their 20s and 30s craving. — Sheena Easton

In adolescence, it's 'How do I fit in?' In your 20s, 'What do I want to do?' Your 30s, 'Is this what I'm meant to do?' I think the trick is living the questions. Not worrying so much about what's ahead but rather sitting in the gray area; being okay with where you are. If you can find the parity between 'Where am I going?' and 'What's my purpose?' you've got two pretty solid pillars for your coffee table. — Chris Pine

One of the reasons I wrote 'Airborn' was that I'd fallen in love with the great passenger airships which flew in the '20s and '30s. Their time was short-lived. They were frail, they tended to crash; and they could never be as fast, safe and efficient as the airplanes that replaced them. — Kenneth Oppel

I'd grown up with a lot of women. My mother was a famous lesbian in the '20s and '30s, and I grew up with only women, so I was used to getting on with them. — Patrick Macnee

I think I'm aware of entering my late 30s versus being in my late 20s, when the web was coming out as this new thing. It reminds me of how people used to tell me about my great-grandmother and how they used to gather around a radio listening to soap operas. — Kalup Linzy

I'm looking forward to playing the meatier roles you get in your 30s. The early 20s can be a hard time for an actress - it's always bombshell or romantic lead. The good stuff you can really sink your teeth into comes later. — Jessica Marais