Adolescence is best enjoyed without self-consciousness, but self-consciousness, unfortunately, is its leading symptom. Even when something important happens to you, even when your heart’s getting crushed or exalted, even when you’re absorbed in building the foundations of a personality, there come those moments when you’re aware that what’s happening is not the real story. Unless you die, the real story is still ahead of you. This alone, this cruel mixture of consciousness and irrelevance, this built-in hollowness, is enough to account for how pissed off you are. You’re miserable and ashamed if you don’t believe your adolescent troubles matter, but you’re stupid if you do. … But, when does the real story start? At forty-three, I feel grateful almost daily to be the adult I wished I could be when I was seventeen. I work on my arm strength at the gym; I’ve become pretty good with tools. At the same time, almost daily, I lose battles with the seventeen-year-old who’s still inside me. I eat half a box of Oreos for lunch, I binge on TV, I make sweeping moral judgments, I run around town in torn jeans, I drink Martinis on a Tuesday night, I stare at beer-commercial cleavage, I define as uncool any group to which I can’t belong, I sneak cigarettes on the roof, I feel the urge to key Range Rovers and slash their tires; I pretend I’m never going to die.
The double bind, the problem of consciousness mixed with nothingness, never goes away. You never stop waiting for the real story to start, because the only real story, in the end, is that you die. … --Jonathan Franzen
I wonder if anyone in the world works harder at anything than American school kids work at popularity. Navy SEALs and neurosurgery residents seem like slackers by comparison. They occasionally take vacations; some even have hobbies. A teenager may work at being popular every waking hours, 365 days a year. –Paul Graham
I tried to obliterate my teen-age years in movie theatres because my teen-age years both embarrassed and saddened me. Between double features of French films, between putting down one book and picking up the next, I’d glance at my wristwatch to see if I was in my twenties yet. –Jonathan Lethem
Why can’t they be like we were, perfect in every way? What’s the matter with kids today? --“Kids,” Bye Bye Birdie, Lee Adams
We used to all come outside when the streetlights came on and prowl the neighborhood in a pack, a herd of kids on banana seat bikes and mini-bikes. The grown-ups looked so silly framed in their living room and kitchen windows. They complained about their days and sighed deep sighs of depression and loss. They talked about how spoiled and lucky children were these days. “We will never be that way,” we said, “we will never say those things.” --Jill McCorkle
Raising teenagers is like trying to nail Jell-O to a tree. –Leo McCarron
In a teenage brain, impulse control is still under construction. The job of the parent is to act as the surrogate prefrontal cortex. –David Walsh
