Teenagers

Quotes

With the social and ethical context of the transformations of adolescence as the centrepiece of her chapter, Amanda Howell in "Coming of Age, With Vampires" gives voice to the figure of teenager as the Other in society. Comparing three cinematic and television productions (Lost Boys, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and Let the Right One In, and engaging with the metaphor of threshold crossings, the author stresses the role of the vampire trope in negotiating the cultural angst and challenges associated with puberty. Of particular interest to this discussion is how adolescent protagonists face an untested freedom and unaccustomed responsibility for the self which entails the challenge of consent.
- David Baker, Stephanie Green, Agnieszka Stasiewicz-Bieńkowska, "Hospitality, Rape and Consent in Vampire Popular Culture: Letting the Wrong One In", p. 11.

I'll tell you what would really age me fast: if I had a teenaged daughter. I don't think I could handle that. Because that would mean teenaged boys would be coming around to my house. "Hi, Mr. Barry!" they'd say, with their cheerful, innocent young voices. "We're here to have sex with your daughter!" No, of course they wouldn't come out and say that, but I know that's what they'd be thinking, because I was a teenaged boy once, and I was basically a walking hormone storm. I'm sure modern boys are no different. So if I had a teenaged daughter, and a boy came to my house, after somehow picking his way through the land mines in the lawn, I'd probably lunge through the screen door and strangle him right there ("Hi, Mr. Barry! Is Jennifer heAAAAAAAWWWWK"). You think I'm exaggerating, but I have male friends whose daughters are approaching puberty at speeds upwards of 700 miles per hour, and when you say the word "dating," my friends get a look in their eyes that makes Charles Manson look like Captain Kangaroo.
- Dave Barry, Dave Barry Turns 40 (1990), p. 63

I make movies for teenage boys. Oh, dear, what a crime.
- Michael Bay quoted in Bryan Curtis, "The Bad Boy of Summer: Michael Bay vs. his Critics", Slate (2005-06-15)

Dr. David Wheeler: ...easiest thing in the world, being a teenager: you get up, you go to school, you come home, and you do your homework. How do you mess that up? Yet all of you did, in one way or another ― and now I have to clean up that mess!
- Stan Berkowitz, Batman Beyond, "The Last Resort", (March 4, 2000).

Every young adult has the potential power to help the entire world. He just needs the right guidance and support. A garden with different flowers becomes beautiful when it blossoms. Similarly, if parents learn how to be a ‘gardener’ and are able to recognize their child's personality and nourish it, then their ‘garden’ will become fragrant! This is what positive parenting is all about!
- Dada Bhagwan in Parent - Child Interaction in the Development of a Juvenile's Personality (2019), p. 100.

But nope, teenage humans. The worst, most ill-conceived creatures in the universe.
“Other than turkeys, right?”
Yes, nothing beats those morons.
- Wesley Chu, The Rebirths of Tao (2015), ISBN 978-0-85766-430-3, p. 424

Wars are fought by teenagers, you realize that. They really ought to be fought by the politicians and old people who start these wars.
- James Clavell interview with Don Swaim of CBS Radio (1986) (RealAudio file)

Betty, who substituted at the middle school, like to say that there was really no such thing as a thirteen-year-old, but inside every eighth grader were a ten-year-old and a sixteen-year-old locked in mortal combat. Given enough time, the big kid would win and ask to borrow the car. Meanwhile, according to Betty, the best Faith could do was to silently chant the mother’s mantra: “It’s only a phase, it’s only a phase.”
- James Patrick Kelly, Faith, reprinted in Mike Resnick (ed.) This is My Funniest (2006), ISBN 978-1-932100-95-2, p. 135

As a teenager you are at the last stage in your life when you will be happy to hear that the phone is for you.
- Fran Lebowitz, Social Studies

Education conceived as preparation for life locks the learning process within a vicious circle. Youth educated in terms of adult ideas and taught to think of learning as a process which ends when real life begins will make no better use of intelligence than the elders who prescribe the system. Brief and rebellious moments occur when youth sees this fallacy clearly, but alas, the pressure of adult civilization is too great; in the end young people fit into the pattern, succumb to the tradition of their elders—indeed, become elderly-minded before their time. Education within the vicious circle becomes not a joyous enterprise but rather something to be endured because it leads to a satisfying end. But there can be no genuine joy in the end if means are irritating, painful.
- Eduard C. Lindeman, The Meaning of Adult Education (1926), p. 3

And I decided that if motherhood turned a "young American beauty" into that unhappy woman, then motherhood wasn't for me, either. That youthful, emotional decision (ill-formed and made for the wrong reasons) kept me from too much early sexual experimentation, and probably turned me into a bit of a tease. I'd "neck" but only go so far, because . . . well, I because I was going to be a writer, "free and unhampered." At the very least. I wasn't going to get pregnant in my teens.
- Jane Roberts in The God of Jane: A Psychic Manifesto, p. 44

Even if teen-age children aren't making a sound, it's quieter when they're gone. They put a boiling in the air around them.[…] No wonder poltergeists only infest houses with adolescent children.
- John Steinbeck, The Winter of Our Discontent (1961), Ch. V

I'd always, you see, even in my early teens, had these problems — problems of suddenly waking up in the middle of the night and having this horrifying vision that life is completely meaningless. You know — just thinking about something like the depths of space, and realizing it's got to come to an end somewhere, but apparently it doesn't, and then suddenly getting this terrible feeling that maybe life is a total delusion. G. K. Chesterton once said that in his teens he saw hell, and I really think I did too. I went through extreme depressions, glooms. There was one occasion on which I decided actually to commit suicide. I'd got into this state — I was working as a lab assistant at the school, and what would happen was that I'd make tremendous efforts to push myself up to a level of optimism. I'd do it in the evenings by reading poetry, thinking, writing in my journals, then I'd go back to the school the next day and blaaahhh, right down to the bottom again. This was the feeling of The Mind Parasites — there's something that waits until you've got lots of energy and just sucks you dry like a vampire. This sudden feeling that God was making fun of me made me feel one day, "For God's sake, let's not have any more of this nonsense. I'm damned if I'll be played about with like this. Let me kill myself." And immediately I felt this, I felt a curious sense of inner strength. So I went off to night school quite determined that what I was going to do was to take down the bottle of potassium cyanide from the reagent shelves and drink it. I knew that cyanide burns a hole in the bottom of the stomach and kills you within seconds. Well, I went into the classroom quite determined. There was a group gathered around the professor at the desk. I went over to the reagent shelves, I took down the bottle of potassium cyanide, I uncorked it, and as I started raising this to my lips I suddenly had an extremely clear vision of myself in a few seconds' time with an agonizing pain in the pit of my stomach, and at the same time I suddenly turned into two people. I don't mean that literally, but I mean that there was I, and there beside me was this silly, bloody little idiot called Colin Wilson who was in a state of self-pity and about to kill himself, and I didn't give a damn whether the fool killed himself or not. The trouble was, if he killed himself he'd kill me too. And quite suddenly a terrific sense of overwhelming happiness came over me. I corked up the bottle, put it on the shelf, and for the next few days was in total control of my emotions and everything else. I realized suddenly that you can achieve these states of control, provided that you put yourself in a crisis situation. And that's why throughout The Outsider I keep saying the outsider's salvation lies in extremes.
- Colin Wilson interviewed on Thinking Allowed by Dr. Jeffrey Mishlove

When I was in my teens, I invented a term to describe them. I call it 'holiday consciousness' . . . because I often experienced this sense of optimism and wide-awakeness when setting out on a journey or a holiday. It was always the feeling that the world is self-evidently complex and beautiful, and that life is so obviously good that man's boredom and defeat is an absurdity . . . And then I used to ask: Why do mean forget this so easily? And the answer seemed obvious: because the human will is so flabby and weak. Instead of being self-controlled, self-driven creatures, most men are little more than leaves on a stream, they drift along hoping for the best. I once wrote that men are like grandfather clocks driven by watchsprings.
- Colin Wilson in The Black Room, p. 75

Quotes

With the social and ethical context of the transformations of adolescence as the centrepiece of her chapter, Amanda Howell in "Coming of Age, With Vampires" gives voice to the figure of teenager as the Other in society. Comparing three cinematic and television productions (Lost Boys, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and Let the Right One In, and engaging with the metaphor of threshold crossings, the author stresses the role of the vampire trope in negotiating the cultural angst and challenges associated with puberty. Of particular interest to this discussion is how adolescent protagonists face an untested freedom and unaccustomed responsibility for the self which entails the challenge of consent.
- David Baker, Stephanie Green, Agnieszka Stasiewicz-Bieńkowska, "Hospitality, Rape and Consent in Vampire Popular Culture: Letting the Wrong One In", p. 11.

I'll tell you what would really age me fast: if I had a teenaged daughter. I don't think I could handle that. Because that would mean teenaged boys would be coming around to my house. "Hi, Mr. Barry!" they'd say, with their cheerful, innocent young voices. "We're here to have sex with your daughter!" No, of course they wouldn't come out and say that, but I know that's what they'd be thinking, because I was a teenaged boy once, and I was basically a walking hormone storm. I'm sure modern boys are no different. So if I had a teenaged daughter, and a boy came to my house, after somehow picking his way through the land mines in the lawn, I'd probably lunge through the screen door and strangle him right there ("Hi, Mr. Barry! Is Jennifer heAAAAAAAWWWWK"). You think I'm exaggerating, but I have male friends whose daughters are approaching puberty at speeds upwards of 700 miles per hour, and when you say the word "dating," my friends get a look in their eyes that makes Charles Manson look like Captain Kangaroo.
- Dave Barry, Dave Barry Turns 40 (1990), p. 63

I make movies for teenage boys. Oh, dear, what a crime.
- Michael Bay quoted in Bryan Curtis, "The Bad Boy of Summer: Michael Bay vs. his Critics", Slate (2005-06-15)

Dr. David Wheeler: ...easiest thing in the world, being a teenager: you get up, you go to school, you come home, and you do your homework. How do you mess that up? Yet all of you did, in one way or another ― and now I have to clean up that mess!
- Stan Berkowitz, Batman Beyond, "The Last Resort", (March 4, 2000).

Every young adult has the potential power to help the entire world. He just needs the right guidance and support. A garden with different flowers becomes beautiful when it blossoms. Similarly, if parents learn how to be a ‘gardener’ and are able to recognize their child's personality and nourish it, then their ‘garden’ will become fragrant! This is what positive parenting is all about!
- Dada Bhagwan in Parent - Child Interaction in the Development of a Juvenile's Personality (2019), p. 100.

But nope, teenage humans. The worst, most ill-conceived creatures in the universe.
“Other than turkeys, right?”
Yes, nothing beats those morons.
- Wesley Chu, The Rebirths of Tao (2015), ISBN 978-0-85766-430-3, p. 424

Wars are fought by teenagers, you realize that. They really ought to be fought by the politicians and old people who start these wars.
- James Clavell interview with Don Swaim of CBS Radio (1986) (RealAudio file)

Betty, who substituted at the middle school, like to say that there was really no such thing as a thirteen-year-old, but inside every eighth grader were a ten-year-old and a sixteen-year-old locked in mortal combat. Given enough time, the big kid would win and ask to borrow the car. Meanwhile, according to Betty, the best Faith could do was to silently chant the mother’s mantra: “It’s only a phase, it’s only a phase.”
- James Patrick Kelly, Faith, reprinted in Mike Resnick (ed.) This is My Funniest (2006), ISBN 978-1-932100-95-2, p. 135

As a teenager you are at the last stage in your life when you will be happy to hear that the phone is for you.
- Fran Lebowitz, Social Studies

Education conceived as preparation for life locks the learning process within a vicious circle. Youth educated in terms of adult ideas and taught to think of learning as a process which ends when real life begins will make no better use of intelligence than the elders who prescribe the system. Brief and rebellious moments occur when youth sees this fallacy clearly, but alas, the pressure of adult civilization is too great; in the end young people fit into the pattern, succumb to the tradition of their elders—indeed, become elderly-minded before their time. Education within the vicious circle becomes not a joyous enterprise but rather something to be endured because it leads to a satisfying end. But there can be no genuine joy in the end if means are irritating, painful.
- Eduard C. Lindeman, The Meaning of Adult Education (1926), p. 3

And I decided that if motherhood turned a "young American beauty" into that unhappy woman, then motherhood wasn't for me, either. That youthful, emotional decision (ill-formed and made for the wrong reasons) kept me from too much early sexual experimentation, and probably turned me into a bit of a tease. I'd "neck" but only go so far, because . . . well, I because I was going to be a writer, "free and unhampered." At the very least. I wasn't going to get pregnant in my teens.
- Jane Roberts in The God of Jane: A Psychic Manifesto, p. 44

Even if teen-age children aren't making a sound, it's quieter when they're gone. They put a boiling in the air around them.[…] No wonder poltergeists only infest houses with adolescent children.
- John Steinbeck, The Winter of Our Discontent (1961), Ch. V

I'd always, you see, even in my early teens, had these problems — problems of suddenly waking up in the middle of the night and having this horrifying vision that life is completely meaningless. You know — just thinking about something like the depths of space, and realizing it's got to come to an end somewhere, but apparently it doesn't, and then suddenly getting this terrible feeling that maybe life is a total delusion. G. K. Chesterton once said that in his teens he saw hell, and I really think I did too. I went through extreme depressions, glooms. There was one occasion on which I decided actually to commit suicide. I'd got into this state — I was working as a lab assistant at the school, and what would happen was that I'd make tremendous efforts to push myself up to a level of optimism. I'd do it in the evenings by reading poetry, thinking, writing in my journals, then I'd go back to the school the next day and blaaahhh, right down to the bottom again. This was the feeling of The Mind Parasites — there's something that waits until you've got lots of energy and just sucks you dry like a vampire. This sudden feeling that God was making fun of me made me feel one day, "For God's sake, let's not have any more of this nonsense. I'm damned if I'll be played about with like this. Let me kill myself." And immediately I felt this, I felt a curious sense of inner strength. So I went off to night school quite determined that what I was going to do was to take down the bottle of potassium cyanide from the reagent shelves and drink it. I knew that cyanide burns a hole in the bottom of the stomach and kills you within seconds. Well, I went into the classroom quite determined. There was a group gathered around the professor at the desk. I went over to the reagent shelves, I took down the bottle of potassium cyanide, I uncorked it, and as I started raising this to my lips I suddenly had an extremely clear vision of myself in a few seconds' time with an agonizing pain in the pit of my stomach, and at the same time I suddenly turned into two people. I don't mean that literally, but I mean that there was I, and there beside me was this silly, bloody little idiot called Colin Wilson who was in a state of self-pity and about to kill himself, and I didn't give a damn whether the fool killed himself or not. The trouble was, if he killed himself he'd kill me too. And quite suddenly a terrific sense of overwhelming happiness came over me. I corked up the bottle, put it on the shelf, and for the next few days was in total control of my emotions and everything else. I realized suddenly that you can achieve these states of control, provided that you put yourself in a crisis situation. And that's why throughout The Outsider I keep saying the outsider's salvation lies in extremes.
- Colin Wilson interviewed on Thinking Allowed by Dr. Jeffrey Mishlove

When I was in my teens, I invented a term to describe them. I call it 'holiday consciousness' . . . because I often experienced this sense of optimism and wide-awakeness when setting out on a journey or a holiday. It was always the feeling that the world is self-evidently complex and beautiful, and that life is so obviously good that man's boredom and defeat is an absurdity . . . And then I used to ask: Why do mean forget this so easily? And the answer seemed obvious: because the human will is so flabby and weak. Instead of being self-controlled, self-driven creatures, most men are little more than leaves on a stream, they drift along hoping for the best. I once wrote that men are like grandfather clocks driven by watchsprings.
- Colin Wilson in The Black Room, p. 75

Quotes

See also

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Teenagers

Quotes

See also

External links

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