#dole

We live in an adolescent society, Neverland, where never growing up seems more the norm than the exception. Little boys wearing expensive suits and adult bodies should not be allowed to run big corporations. They shouldn’t be allowed to run governments, armies, religions, small businesses and charities either and just quietly, they make pretty shabby husbands and fathers too. Mankind has become Pankind and whilst “lost boys” abound, there is also an alarming increase in the number of “lost girls. ↗

— Daniel Prokop

#emotional-intelligence #growing-up #humor #inspirational #rites-of-passage

Later, at the sink in our van, Mama rinsed the blue stain and the odd spiders, caterpillars, and stems from the bucket. "Not what we usually start with, but we can go again tomorrow. And this will set up nicely in about six, eight jars." The berries were beginning to simmer in the big pot on the back burner. Mama pushed her dark wooden spoon into the foaming berries and cicrcled the wall of the pot slowly. I leaned my hot arms on the table and said, "Iphy better not go tomorrow. She got tired today." I was smelling the berries and Mamaa's sweat, and watching the flex of the blue veins behind her knees. "Does them good. The twins always loved picking berries, even more than eating them. Though Elly likes her jam." "Elly doesn't like anything anymore." The knees stiffened and I looked up. The spoon was motionless. Mama stared at the pot. "Mama, Elly isn't there anymore. Iphy's changed. Everything's changed. This whole berry business, cooking big meals that nobody comes for, birthday cakes for Arty. It's dumb, Mama. Stop pretending. There isn't any family anymore, Mama." Then she cracked me with the big spoon. It smacked wet and hard across my ear, and the purple-black juice spayed across the table. She started at me, terrified, her mouth and eyes gaping with fear. I stared gaping at her. I broke and ran. I went to the generator truck and climbed up to sit by Grandpa. That's the only time Mama ever hit me and I knew I deserved it. I also knew that Mama was too far gone to understand why I deserved it. She'd swung that spoon in a tigerish reflex at blasphemy. But I believed that Arty had turned his back on us, that the twins were broken, that the Chick was lost, that Papa was weak and scared, that Mama was spinning fog, and that I was an adolescent crone sitting in the ruins, watching the beams crumble, and warming myself in the smoke from the funeral pyre. That was how I felt, and I wanted company. I hated Mama for refusing to see enough to be miserable with me. Maybe, too, enough of my child heart was still with me to think that if she would only open her eyes she could fix it all back up like a busted toy. ↗

— Katherine Dunn

#business

Adolescence is society's permission slip for combining physical maturity with psychological irresponsibility. ↗

— Terri Apter

#combining #irresponsibility #maturity #permission #physical

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

The day the child realizes that all adults are imperfect, he becomes an adolescent; the day he forgives them, he becomes an adult; the day he forgives himself, he becomes wise. ↗

— Alden Nowlan

#adult #becomes #child #day #forgives

When you have little girls, you're the coolest person in the world. I know at some point that's going to end; in their adolescence I'll become the opposite of that, especially if I'm parked outside a high school party. ↗

— Jerry O'Connell

#become #coolest #end #especially #going

One's teachers all belonged to that generation who were imperialists, and the whole narrative throughout my adolescence was of countries leaving the empire. I find it extraordinary that this purpose which drove how we viewed the world is now considered to be something that has no effect upon us. ↗

— Jeremy Paxman

#belonged #considered #countries #drove #effect

The fact is, if a young man is naturally indolent, the spur of necessity will drive him but a very little way, while the having enough to live upon is often the means of preserving his self-respect. ↗

— James Payn

#enough #fact #having #him #his

I had the classic 40 meltdown. I did. It's embarrassing. It was pretty funny. But then I recovered. To me, it was like a second adolescence. Hormonally, my body was changing, my mind was changing, and so my relationship to myself and the world around me came to this assault of finiteness. ↗

— Keanu Reeves

#around #assault #body #came #changing

Germany is in terrible condition this year. This is particularly true of the working masses, who are so undernourished that tuberculosis is having a rich harvest, particularly of adolescent children. ↗

— Agnes Smedley

#children #condition #germany #harvest #having