818 Quotes About Coming-of-age

To all the boys, for when you become men: you'll leave women all throughout your life because they're holding you back, and even after she's gone she'll still weigh you down. To all the women: stay away from us men. We don't know anything about you, despite what we try to convince you of.

...people who don't live at least a little bit in fear, have nothing left to live for.

People will drive by their high school ten years down the road, just so they can pretend that thinking "not much has changed" is actually true. When really, everything has changed. The air smells the same, but the roads have cracked more. The roads have cracked so much they now look like the skin on a crocodile's back. And all the fields, green in the summers, golden in the autumns, have all been paved over with new reasons to never come back.

The one thing I do remember is that as I retraced my steps through all the familiar streets of my life, Inow felt completely lost.

So the first step out of childhood is made all at once, without looking before or behind, without caution, and nothing held in reserve.

And I envy you. You have the one thing that matters. You have all your discoveries before you.

People age even in pictures. Champagne glasses can stay full. With enough of a leap you could say that pictures amongst the galaxies and quasars capture a tiny bit of the universe for however long they last. The only thing pictures cannot do is keep someone alive in anything but memory after they have passed. Some pictures although painful to look at should always stay up on our walls to remind us from time to time of who we have loved.

Those times in life when a mask falls away and everything makes sense, even if just for a moment, you pay attention. Sometimes they involve an actual blindfold.

There were days when Amory resented that life had changed from an even progress along a road stretching ever in sight, with the scenery merging and blending, into a succession of quick, unrelated scenes...