#adolescence

It’s hard not to be impatient with the absurdity of the young; they tell us that two and two make four as though it had never occurred to us, and they’re disappointed if we can’t share their surprise when they have discovered that a hen lays an egg. There’s a lot of nonsense in their ranting and raving, but it’s not all nonsense. One ought to sympathize with them; one ought to do one’s best to understand. One has to remember how much has to be forgotten and how much has to be learnt when for the first time one faces life. It’s not very easy to give up one’s ideals, and the brute facts of every day are bitter pills to swallow. The spiritual conflicts of adolescence can be very severe and one can do little to resolve them. ↗

— W. Somerset Maugham

#youth #life

All my life I've felt like there was something wrong with me. Something missing or damaged." "Every teenager in the world feels like that, feels broken or out of place, different somehow, royalty mistakenly born into a family of peasants. ↗

— Cassandra Clare

#adolescent-angst #teenaged-angst #family

Until recently the locus of sexual fantasy was peopled with images actually glimpsed or were sensations actually felt, or private imaginings taken from suggestions in the real world, a dream well where weightless images from it floated, transformed by imagination. It prepared children, with these hints and traces of other people's bodies, to become adults and enter the landscape of adult sexuality and meet the lover face to face. Lucky men and women are able to keep a pathway clear to that dream well, peopling it with scenes and images that meet them as they get older, created with their own bodies mingling with other bodies; they choose a lover because of a smell from a coat, a way of walking, the shape of a lip, belong in their imagined interior and resonate back in time deep into the bones that recall childhood and early adolescent imagination. ↗

— Naomi Wolf

#fantasy #feminism #sex #sexuality #beauty

Pewnego dnia w sezonie oglądania kwiatów wiśni wybrałem się z Senseiem do parku Ueno. Zobaczyliśmy tam uroczą młodą parę. Oboje szczęśliwi, przytuleni do siebie spacerowali pod ukwiecionymi drzewami. Ponieważ działo się to w miejscu publicznym, wielu ludzi - zamiast oglądać kwiaty - zwracało wzrok w ich stronę i przypatrywało im się uważnie. - Wyglądają jak nowożeńcy - rzekł Sensei. - Bardzo im chyba ze sobą dobrze - odpowiedziałem. Sensei nawet się nie uśmiechnął. Specjalnie, aby nie widzieć tej pary, skierował się w przeciwną stronę. A następnie zapytał: - Czy byłeś już kiedyś zakochany? Odpowiedziałem, że nie. - A czy nie chciałbyś się zakochać? Nic nie odpowiedziałem. - Nie twierdzisz chyba, że nie chciałbyś? - Nie. - Zadrwiłeś sobie z tej młodej pary, prawda? Lecz w tej drwinie zabrzmiała nuta niezadowolenia. Pragniesz miłości, ale jej nie znajdujesz. - Czy tak to zabrzmiało? - Oczywiście. Ten, kto by sam zaznał szczęścia miłości, mówiłby o tych dwojgu cieplej. Ale... słuchaj, miłość jest zbrodnią! Czy ty tego nie rozumiesz? Zaskoczył mnie. Nie odpowiedziałem nic. ↗

— Sōseki Natsume

#love #women #love

Byłem młodzieńcem dość prostodusznym, nie mającym doświadczenia w obcowaniu z kobietami. Czułem, co prawda, instynktowną niejasną tęknotę do płci odmiennej. Ale było to odczucie tak mgliste jak marzenie senne, podobne do wspomnień budzących się w chwili, gdy patrzymy na wiosenne chmury. Dlatego też ulegało nagłej przemianie z chwilą, gdy stawałem przed rzeczywistą kobietą, która - zamiast mnie pociągać - odpychała wzbudzając silną niechęć. ↗

— Sōseki Natsume

#love #women #love

I think one is naturally impressed by anything having a beginning a middle and an ending when one is beginning writing and that it is a natural thing because when one is emerging from adolescence, which is really when one first begins writing one feels that one would not have been one emerging from adolescence if there had not been a beginning and a middle and an ending to anything. ↗

— Gertrude Stein

#gertrude-stein #narration #narrative #writing #nature

Criticism starts - it has to start - with a real passion for reading. It can come in adolescence, even in your twenties, but you must fall in love with poems. ↗

— Harold Bloom

#come #criticism #even #fall #love

I have a good memory for early life. My visual memory is good about childhood and adolescence, and less good in the last 10 years. I could probably tell you less what happened in the last 10 years. I remember what houses looked like, sometimes they just pop into my head. ↗

— Jeffrey Eugenides

#adolescence #childhood #could #early #early life

I am in an adolescence in reverse, as mysterious as the first, except that this time I feel it as a decay of the odds that I might live for a while, that I can sleep it off. ↗

— Harold Brodkey

#am #decay #except #feel #first

Fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, lemme tell you. Those are big years. Everybody always thinks of it as a time of adolescence—just getting through to the real part of your life—but it's more than that. Sometimes your whole life happens in those years, and the rest of your life it's just the same story playing out with different characters. I could die tomorrow and have lived the main ups and downs of life. Pain. Loss. Love. And what you all so fondly refer to as wisdom. Wanna know the difference between adult wisdom and young adult wisdom? You have the ability to look back at your past and interpret it. I have the ability to look at my present and live it with my whole body. ↗

— Lidia Yuknavitch

#dora-a-headcase #inspirational #lidia #wisdom #ya