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Link Quote Stars Tags Author
21a51b9 "Where should I go?" -Alice. "That depends on where you want to end up." - The Cheshire Cat." books coming-of-age lewis-carroll Lewis Carroll
9134ca2 If you can keep your head when all about you Are losing theirs and blaming it on you, If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you, But make allowance for their doubting too;! philosophical ataraxy fathers-and-sons coming-of-age Rudyard Kipling
336feaf Whose little boy are you? racism youth religion god harlem james-baldwin renaissance institution epiphany coming-of-age black church James Baldwin
be78cca Soon, he would become an adult. And when he did, there would be not going back because adulthood was akin to what his father had once said about being a war hero: one you became one, you died one. coming-of-age childhood Khaled Hosseini
2fea0d0 So the first step out of childhood is made all at once, without looking before or behind, without caution, and nothing held in reserve. earthsea coming-of-age childhood Ursula K. Le Guin
7d6f6cc Sometimes, when you were thinking about something, trying to understand it, it opened up in your head without you expecting it to, like it was a soft spongy light unfolding, and you understood, it made sense forever... paddy-clarke roddy-doyle coming-of-age growing-up Roddy Doyle
8af855c At least I rescued your poor hot dog. madness grief funny humor disturbing frightening ghoul gives-me-the-willies savior pyrokinesis sleepaway-camp summer-camp wiener wiener-roast goosebumps spooky hot-dog rescue coming-of-age teenage lord fire ghost scary teen lonely laugh nostalgia R.L. Stine
c1e8d93 It's good if you can accept your life--you'll notice Your face has become deranged trying to adjust To it. Your face thought your life would look Like your bedroom mirror when you were ten. That was a clear river touched by mountain wind. Even your parents can't believe how much you've changed. life changing coming-of-age Robert Bly
234fed3 In my early teens, I heard about and its mutating typewriters and talking cockroaches. While I would hardly classify its dystopic vision as erotica now, at the time, was my first foray into consuming smut. It was because of Burroughs that I knew about the particular musk that blooms when a rectum is penetrated, and that death-by-hanging produces spontaneous trouser tents. The first Burroughs I read was , but I buried myself in a few of his stories, and thus the arc of my recollection is just as non-linear as his narrative. literature youth william-s-burroughs homosexuality coming-of-age queer erotica Peter Dubé
7375243 I'd wrestled against the inner voice of my mother, the voice of caution, of duty, of fear of the unknown, the voice that said the world was dangerous and safety was always the first measure and that often confused pleasure with danger, the mother who had, when I'd moved to the city, sent me clippings about young women who were raped and murdered there, who elaborated on obscure perils and injuries that had never happened to her all her life, and who feared mistakes even when the consequences were minor. Why go to Paradise when the dishes aren't done? What if the dirty dishes clamor more loudly than Paradise? family-relationships motherhood family coming-of-age mothers Rebecca Solnit
0048982 ...You are a little boy. You want the moon to drink from as a golden cup; and so, it is very likely that you will become a great man -- if only you remain a little child. All the world'sgreat have been little boys who wanted the moon; running and climbing, they sometimes catch a firefly. But if one grow to a man's mind, that mind must see that it cannot have the moon and would not want it if it could -- and so, it catches no fireflies.' [Merlin] great-man want-the-moon great-men maturity coming-of-age John Steinbeck
c80cb81 "- ...before I was going to college, my secret plan was to one day not tell anybody and just get on some bus to some random city and just move there and become this totally different person. - Then what? - ...and not come back until I had totally become this person... I used to think about it all the time... coming-of-age Daniel Clowes
b4dbfa8 "Kipster is a perfectly valid word," Wendy argued, about to write down her score on the little notepad that had come with the game. "Okay, so what does it mean?" Mandy wanted to know. Wendy struggled to come up with an answer, and finally just changed the subject with school gossip. Mandy found herself just ignoring it... it always sounded the same, the same events, same rumors, same secrets, same affairs, but never anything of interest to her. "Well Sarah's on drugs again and that's why she did it in Mario's backseat, but now she might be pregnant, oh, and that messed-up Seth kid's been cutting himself again so he was sent away to Halifax last week, and there's a festival in Wolfville but Kathy won't go because Audrey-Rose is going to be there and they hate each other, and...." Mandy had learned two years ago to detach herself from gossip; she'd learned it from Jud's death. Wendy may have been eighteen years old but she could be immature on the best of days." suicide words funny 80-s argue kipster cape-breton nova-scotia boring eighties drama-queen scrabble maturity coming-of-age canada pollution growing-up baby teenage fighting eating gossip bullying scary game drama self-harm nostalgia rumors Rebecca McNutt
cb92324 Wherever Cool is, anyway, I missed it, and now I'm stuck observing these machinations or sex and status and dancing and parties and people sucking at each other under the bleacher seating like some kind of freak, when I'm not the freak; Rich is the freak. Clearly. When I grow up, that had better be understood and I had better be compensated, or I'm going to shoot myself in the head. sex freak coming-of-age cool teenagers teens Ned Vizzini
d0f338e "They think I'm not entirely 'grounded in reality', they say. They want me to go to some live-in nerdy activity ranch thing for troubled Canadian youth, that one out in Ontario where you come back programmed like some robot, dressed in a tye-dyed shirt and eating tuna sandwiches," Mandy explained, a horrified look on her face. "You're eighteen, not twelve! Would they really send you to some rat's nest like that?" Wendy questioned in mock horror. "Aw hell no, if you get sent there, they'll make you hold hands and sing songs about caring! And they'll force you to recycle everything in blue canisters, and to discuss your emotions in front of groups of bratty little dopes!" "Dear god, they'll have geeky youth wiener roasts at night, and no locks on the doors!" Mandy added, eyes wide. "...It'll be the day pigs fly, my parents have the camp brochure on the fridge but they'll never go through with sending me there. They always forget." family friendship humor locks ontario preteen reprogramming sleepaway straight-camp tuna-sandwich nova-scotia summer-camp wiener-roast rebel pressure troubled center coming-of-age canada teen self-help nostalgia Rebecca McNutt
fe6b625 Children played guessing games, telling each other whether the gun fired was and AK-47, a G3, an RPG, or a machine gun. coming-of-age memoirs sierra-leone Ishmael Beah
c1ed1a8 Sitting in the wicker rocking chair with her interrupted work in her lap, Amaranta watched Aureliano Jose, his chin covered with foam, stropping his razor to give himself his first shave. His blackheads bled and he cut his upper lip as he tried to shape a mustache of blond fuzz, and when it was all over he looked the same as before, but the laborious process gave Amaranta the feeling that she had begun to grow old at that moment. youth puberty coming-of-age Gabriel Garcí­a Márquez
8b99f5c He began to see the truth, that Ged had neither lost nor won but, naming the shadow of his death with his own name, had made himself whole: a man: who, knowing his whole true self, cannot be used or possessed by any power other than himself, and whose life therefore is lived for life's sake and never in the service of ruin, or pain, or hatred, or the dark. In the Creation of Ea, which is the oldest song, it is said, 'Only in silence the word, only in dark the light, only in dying life: bright the hawk's flight on the empty sky. good-and-evil self-knowledge fear death life coming-of-age manhood evil Ursula K. Le Guin
d5ff665 The headlights of parked cars shone through the rain, and the sidewalks extended, empty, into the darkness. Underground, the sewers surged like rivers, and a few blocks away, sirens blared. He was no longer aware of his heart or thoughts, only the image of a sunken face staring up from a well, the paleness rising through the water like polished bone. A ringed hand reached toward it, but as the fingers approached, the face would sink away, its eyes opening, closing, and the droplets of red falling like leaves. He was a child running through an autumn cemetery, leaping over cast iron fences, the rain bleeding into the tombstones and the roofs of the mausoleums, his legs following the wings of a crow, flapping to the north. A hedge of withered roses stood between him and his childhood house. He tripped and grazed his cheek on a manhole, his red blooming in the water. The sun set behind the hill; the house turned black--abandoned and derelict--and Chris knew he had to keep running, ahead, into the unknown. literature identity literary-fiction coming-of-age self-realization Cory Ingram
ae91c9f Some secret of nurture withered a generation or two before I arrived, if it had ever existed before among the poor, marginalized people on the edges of Europe from whom I descend. Both my parents grew up with a deep sense of poverty that was mostly emotional but that they imagined as material long after they clambered into the middle class, and so they were more like a pair of rivalrous older siblings than parents who see their children as extensions of themselves and their hopes. They were stuck in separateness. I didn't realize anything was odd until I was already on my own and found out that not everyone's parents cut them off financially as soon as the law allowed. I tried to leave home unsuccessfully at fourteen and fifteen and sixteen and did so successfully at seventeen, heading off to another country, as far away as I could go, and once I got there I realized I was more on my own than I had anticipated: I was henceforth entirely repsonsible for myself and thus began a few years of poverty. family-relationships poverty family coming-of-age parents Rebecca Solnit
2168df1 My fish dream is a sex dream. science coming-of-age Joseph Heller
ad6b9f1 I was quite enchanted with myself. I had always thought I had very strong views on sexual morality. I found I had nothing of the kind. coming-of-age sexuality Jane Gardam
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