Just Because I'm Young Quotes

“Street culture is a culture of containment. Most young people do not realize that it all too often leads to a "dead end". "Street culture," as I am using the term, is a counterforce to movement culture. Street culture in contemporary urban reality is synonymous with survival at all costs. This world view is mostly negative, because it demands constant adjustment to circumstances that are often far beyond young people's control or understanding, such as economics, education, housing, employment, nutrition, law, and so forth.”

— Haki R. Madhubuti

“I'm a talentless but popular young singer and I have the feeling someone is watching me. I use the term loosely because I have few feelings, and even they're too simple, like primary colors.”

— Dennis Cooper

“Thus he spent his whole life searching for his own truth, but it remained hidden to him because he had learned at a very young age to hate himself for what his mother had done to him. ( ... ) But not once did he allow himself to direct his endless, justified rage at the true culprit, the woman who had kept him locked up in her prison for as long as she could. All his life he attempted to free himself of that prison, with the help of drugs, travel, illusions, and above all poetry. But in all these desperate efforts to open the doors that would have led to liberation, one of them remained obstinently shut, the most important one: the door to the emotional reality of his childhood, to the feelings of the little child who was forced to grow up with a severely disturbed, malevolent woman, with no father to protect him from her.”

— Alice Miller

“A story has come down about Rumi: a woman asks if he would say something to her young boy about his eating too much of a particular kind of white-sugar candy. Rumi tells her to come back in two weeks. She does, and he tells her again to come in two weeks. She does, and he advises the child to cut down on sweets.
"Why did you not say this a month ago?"
"Because I had to see if I could resist having that candy for two weeks. I couldn't. Then I tried again and was successful. Only now can I tell him to try not to have so much.”

— Coleman Barks

“I think specifically because of the character that I played, people are very connected to her. I used to get letters from young gay and lesbian and trans-gendered kids saying, 'I didn't kill myself because of Buffy'.”

— Amber Benson

“In the Food-Star parking lot, a young blond woman asks Ivy if she has been saved. "What are you talking about?" says Ivy. "Saved!" The young woman's smile brightens distinctly. "You know," she says, "have you found Jesus?" "There's no point in talking to me," says Ivy. When the young woman only blinks and ups her smile volume, Ivy says, "I don't believe in God." "Why not?" "Because I know that I am entirely insignificant, doomed to complete extinction, and I see no reason to pretend otherwise.”

— Jennifer Egan

“Even for charity I always give priority to education because I always teach young people - knowledge is your real companion, your life long companion, not fortune. Fortune can disappear.”

— Stanley Ho

“I wanna get a piece of bread and draw a smiley face on it with condiments then take pictures just because I'm young and I can - y o l o”

— Myself

“Why do ants alone have parasites whose intoxicating moistures they drink and for whom they will sacrifice even their young? Because as they are the most highly socialized of insects, so their lives are the most intolerable.”

— Cyril Connolly

“Divorce is hard. I was about 29 when my husband and I split up. I think we probably fared better than most, because we were young and didn't have kids - but divorce is hard.”

— Connie Britton

“Don't be offended because I think you're young. Youth is a failing only too easily outgrown.”

— Agatha Christie

“You hit a certain age and - especially because of TV - the young cooks coming up say, 'You're a sellout, because you're doing something other than what you should be doing.' 'Top Chef' is a double-edged sword for me: There's a whole group of people who will not come to the restaurants because they assume I'm not in them anymore, all I do is TV.”

— Tom Colicchio

“How much of our earth has been wet by blood because of jealousy! And at the end of life, what does it all matter? We grow old and the young look at us and can never see that once we made a kingdom ring for love.”

— Bernard Cornwell

“Why she did not like Jane Fairfax might be a difficult question to answer; Mr. Knightley had once told her it was because she saw in her the really accomplished young woman, which she wanted to be thought herself; and though the accusation had been eagerly refuted at the time, there were moments of self-examination in which her conscience could not quite acquit her.”

— Jane Austen

“Fury ignited behind my breastbone , a hot glow like coals blooming into something sharp and dangerous. It was the same old crap- someone thinking they can push you around because you're young, because you're helpless. You had to just sit there and take it because you were under a certain number , because you weren't a real person yet; you could be picked up and dropped like a toy, left behind or thrown away ...”

— Lili St. Crow

“If I'm going to be a pessimist, then I should just stop writing for young people because that's too heavy a burden to put on young readers. But also, I get to meet with people who have waded through horrible things, and they get up every morning, and they try to do their best.”

— Deborah Ellis

“It took me a long time to make that leap to being a grown-up and responsible adult because I carried on being a child actor into my late twenties. It's OK to be precocious when you're young, but when you're a man of about 27 or 28 and playing a 17-year-old in a TV show, it kind of prolongs your childhood.”

— Dexter Fletcher

“I am pitching it feebly," said young Bingo earnestly. "You haven't heard the thing. I have. Rosie shoved the cylinder on the dictating-machine last night before dinner, and it was grisly to hear the instrument croaking out those awful sentences. If that article appears I shall be kidded to death by every pal I've got. Bertie," he said, his voice sinking to a hoarse whisper, "you have about as much imagination as a warthog, but surely even you can picture to yourself what Jimmy Bowles and Tuppy Rogers, to name only tow, will say when they see me referred to in print as "half god, half prattling, mischievous child"?"
I jolly well could
"She doesn't say that?"I gasped.
"She certainly does. And when I tell you that I selected that particular quotation because it's about the only one I can stand hearing spoken, you will realise what I'm up against.”

— P.G. Wodehouse

“When I was a young filmmaker starting out, I was really snobby about all the affirmative action for women filmmakers because I felt it should be about your talent, and I made a film that won awards, and people wanted me.”

— Gillian Armstrong

“Young professionals seeking cities to live and work in, and a wave of immigrants in inner-city neighborhoods and inner suburbs that eventually produced second-generation college graduates who moved into the center city to live and work. These groups joined the gays and artists who have always chosen to live in urban communities.12 Edward Glaeser points out that not all cities have succeeded in the past generation - and he points to Detroit, Michigan, and Leipzig, Germany, as examples. But most cities have found the power to reinvent themselves, argues Glaeser, because the essence of what makes a city a city is the bringing of people together to innovate. At one level, this means bringing together the most highly trained and talented people, the "elites." Yet at another level, it means bringing together the most energetic, ambitious, and risk-taking people from among the”

— Timothy Keller

“I obviously don't feel under pressure to look young, because I have had no Botox or surgery. I don't judge people who choose to have it, but I don't want to erase who I am.”

— Diane Von Furstenberg

“When I was young, clothes were really just about what fit, because Ashley and I were so tiny. So I understood fit before I understood style.”

— Mary-Kate Olsen

“When I wrote 'The Pregnant Widow' three or four years ago, I tried to reread my first novel, 'The Rachel Papers,' because their young heroes are the same age. I couldn't finish it. It seemed to me so technically slapdash and weak.”

— Martin Amis

“A man and his young son crouched in the woods just before sunset, out where Palm Beach County meets the Everglades. Their eyes focused on the train tracks a few yards away, a tight bend just past the clearing where Pratt & Whitney tests its jet engines. A shiny new Lincoln penny sat on one of the rails. "Why are we doing this, Daddy?" "To get a flat penny." "What for?" "Because it's fun!" A train whistle blew in the distance. "Here she comes! Get down!" The pair crouched and waited, the train growing closer. It was in sight before they knew it, nothing but a blur as it entered the bend and hit the penny. There was a harsh grinding of metal. The father and son watched in astonishment as The Silver Stingray jumped the tracks and twenty cars jackknifed down the embankment toward the swamp. "Daddy? Did we do that?" "How'd you like some ice cream?”

— Tim Dorsey

“You'll have to take me to some museums, he said. He was being the young man on the road, following the sun because gray weather made him suicidal, writing his poetry in his mind in diners and gas station men's rooms across the country.”

— Francesca Lia Block

“I remember being very, very aware of gender when I was really young. Not necessarily in a bad way. Maybe it's a little bit because I'm Norwegian and how I've been brought up.”

— Jenny Hval

“The belief that female sexual expression is uniquely dehumanizing is a double standard, no matter how much you dress it up in feminist language. Instead of condemning young women for the length of their skirts, why not use that energy for condemning anyone who would think that a woman is lesser-than because she wears a miniskirt?”

— Amanda Marcotte

“Advertising companies hire the very brightest, wittiest young people to write for them. Not one single sentence of it is worth repeating. Why? Because it wasn't meant.”

— Brenda Ueland

“I'd like to try to inspire the youth, that's obviously where our future is and the kids are the ones you can mould and you can give them ideas and opportunities and I'd like to try to inspire all the young kids because I had a dream when I was young, that was to play for Australia.”

— Steve Waugh

“[The director's idea for the film was:] A young American or English girl goes to Tuscany to visit English expatriates. She is on a mission to lose her virginity. That's a mission easily accomplished, if that's the only mission. The story had to be more complicated than that. Because there is so little happening dramatically, there had to be something to keep you curious.”

— Susan Minot

“There lots of other kids playing in streets around this country today who are going to be dead tomorrow, and the next day, and the next day and month, because other young people are reading the kinds of things and seeing the kinds of things that are available in the media today.”

— Ted Bundy

“Him [my dad] bringing me to the clubhouse when I was young helped me out because I see what they do in baseball and what it's about. He pretty much told me all this stuff when I was younger. Now it's just a matter of doing it.”

— Prince Fielder

“I wanted to learn a little bit about acting, not because I thought I'd find a star vehicle and set the world on fire, but I thought the discipline of it would be good for me. I met a good coach, and I joined her class - with a lot of hungry young actors who really didn't acre if I was a rock 'n' roll singer or not. I started to learn to get a focus, without having to jump up and down every few seconds.”

— Iggy Pop

“You are more thoughtful because you don't act as quickly anymore. When I turned 70 it was the first time I felt young for my age. Fifty dropped on me like a ton of bricks - there is something about that number - but when 70 came along I felt good about it.”

— Jack Nicholson

“The advice I would give to any photographer - young, old or in-between - is to explore anything visual because this is, after all, how you express your artistry. Look at paintings, movies, drawings, sculptures - look at anything visual and try to integrate that into your visual sense. After that, go out and take pictures and keep on taking pictures!”

— Elliott Erwitt