Quotes About Being Young

“So scared of getting older
I'm only good at being young
So I play the numbers game to find a way to say that life has just begun.”

— John Mayer

“Rage swept over her at being young, young and little, as if some evil fairy had put that spell on her. Why must you be locked up in this dreadful cage of childhood for twenty or a hundred years? Nothing in life was possible unless you were old and rich, until then you were only small and futile before your tormentors, desperately waiting for the release that only years could bring.”

— Dawn Powell

“You can't help being young, but it's past time that you stopped being stupid.”

— Scott Lynch

“I'm just confusing the thrill of being young with the notion that the era in which I was young was in any way especially creative or remarkable.”

— Stewart Lee

“There were worse things than being young and foolish.”

— Cathie Pelletier

“Because I was permanently confused, dissatisfied, unhappy, tormented by inadequacy, driven by wanting towards every kind of impossible future, the attitude of mind described by 'tolerantly amused eyes' was years away from me. I don't think I really saw people then, except as appendages to my needs. It's only now, looking back, that I understood, but at the time I lived in a brilliantly lit haze, shifting and flickering according to my changing desires. Of course, that is only a description of being young.”

— Doris Lessing

“On the boardwalk the arcade jukebox plays all night surrounded by teenagers
sometimes twenty bodies deep, bare-skinned and full of energy for the music, for one another, for life, for the little bit of freedom they taste in the salt air and their skin. My father finds his place in this crowd. They are a force together. They don't do drugs. They don't drink. But they do music, and their power comes from their numbers and the thrill of being young on the beach at night.”

— Laura Schenone

“Being young is easy, you know, but it takes guts to be old.”

— Blaize Clement

“A man is always a little shamefaced on his wedding day, like a fox caught in a baited trap, ensnared because his greed overcame his better judgment. The menfolk laughed at Charlie that spring day, and said he was caught for sure now. As the bride, I was praised and fussed over, as if I had won a prize or done something marvelous that no one ever did before, and I could not help feeling pleased and clever that I had managed to turn myself from an ordinary girl into a shining bride. Now I think it is a dirty lie. The man is the one who is winning the game that day, though they always pretend they are not, and the poor girl bride is led into a trap of hard work and harsh words, the ripping of childbirth and the drubbing of her man's fists. It is the end of being young, but no one tells her so. Instead they make over her, and tell her how lucky she is. I wonder do slaves get dressed up in finery on the day they are sold.”

— Sharyn McCrumb

“Is what's manifesting as a fear actually some instinct to resist being young? Youth, with all its accompanying risks, humiliations, and uncertainties, the pressure to do it all before it's too late. Is the sense of imminent death bound up in the desire to leave some kind of a legacy?”

— Lena Dunham

“Being young is an 18 year prison sentence for a crime your parents committed. But you do get time off for good behavior.”

— Orson Scott Card

“I miss everyone. I can remember being young and feeling a thing and identifying it as homesickness, and then thinking well now that's odd, isn't it, because I was home, all the time. What on earth are we to make of that?”

— David Foster Wallace

“Thus it was quickly decided that Pitry-being young, cheerful, and not in the room at the time-would be the best man for the job.”

— Robert Jackson Bennett

“Among these contemptuous women, poor Germaine had the disadvantage of being young
and almost pretty, in a shy, mousy way. She possessed the nonspecific clumsiness of someone who makes such a constant effort to be inconspicuous that she is creatively awkward
without meaning to, Germaine hoarded attention to herself; her almost electric nervousness disturbed the atmosphere surrounding her.”

— John Irving

“Slim is queer and though Nelson isn't supposed to mind that he does. He also minds that there are a couple of slick blacks making it at the party and that one little white girl with that grayish kind of sharp-chinned Polack face from the south side of Brewer took off her shirt while dancing even though she has no tits to speak of and now sits in the kitchen with still bare tits getting herself sick on Southern Comfort and Pepsi. At these parties someone is always in the bathroom being sick or giving themselves a hit or a snort and Nelson minds this too. He doesn't mind any of it very much, he's just tired of being young. There's so much wasted energy to it.”

— John Updike

“What is this thing you call substance abuse?
All I wanna do is forget and get loose.
Drinking and smoking over and over
What's so great about a life that's sober?
There's nothing cool about being young
When the monsters of night have stolen the sun.
I'm tired of searching for words in the sky.
All I wanna do is drink and die.
Nothing is real. It's all a big lie.
All I wanna do is drink and die.
There's nothing cool about being young
When the monsters of night have stolen the sun.”

— Benjamin-Alire Saenz

“Being young is an advantage. You've grown up with games as the dominant entertainment. You have a lot of experience of video games. So what do you want to see that's not been done? Innovation is really low cost for you. You can afford to take risks and fail to execute new ideas.”

— Kim Swift

“They played so good it was frightening. And I, of course, being young, was in awe of everything that was going on and rightly so. I mean, it was too good to believe.”

— Ray Brown

“Almost nothing lives here anymore, except where we plant it? No. No, no, no. We don't know any of that. We have tea parties with our teddies. We go sledding. We enjoy being young. We take what's coming to us. That's our way.”

— M.T. Anderson

“He was angry with himself for being young and the prey of restless foolish impulses, angry also with the change of fortune which was reshaping the world about him into a vision of squalor and insincerity. Yet his anger lent nothing to the vision.”

— James Joyce

“Part of being young is you think gaining 6 lbs. is the end of the world.”

— Melissa McCarthy

“I know for my wife and I, we always loved the idea of being young parents. It is an incredibly inspiring and challenging job being a parent, and as it turns out, being young really helps you keep up.”

— Taylor Hanson

“I haven't had to make a decision between 'my brand' and money. Everybody seems to get what I'm going for: the healthy lifestyle, staying active, being young and youthful.”

— Mikaela Shiffrin

“I invite you, from my sentiments, my convictions and my responsibilities, to work together in the construction of a Uruguay where being young is not suspicious, where aging is not a problem.”

— Tabare Vazquez

“Hirty's the end of being young, forty is where you stop fooling yourself.”

— Stephen King

“Part of being young is making mistakes.”

— Nikki Reed

“I think my faith is important. Being young as well, sometimes it's difficult, but I've got a good family behind me as well.”

— Jermain Defoe

“I can never see why people should be jealous. After all, youth isn't a matter of privilege, we all get the same share of it. Some people may be born at an easier time or be richer or more privileged than others, but that hasn't anything to do with being young”

— P.D. James

“Until recently each generation found it more expedient to plead guilty to the charge of being young and ignorant, easier to take the punishment meted out by the older generation (which had itself confessed to the same crime short years before). The command to grow up at once was more bearable than the faceless horror of wavering purpose, which was youth.”

— Maya Angelou

“Miss Brobity's Being, young man, was deeply imbued with homage to Mind. She revered Mind, when launched, or, as I say, precipitated, on an extensive knowledge of the world. When I made my proposal, she did me the honour to be so overshadowed with a species of Awe, as to be able to articulate only the two words, "O Thou!" meaning myself. Her limpid blue eyes were fixed upon me, her semi-transparent hands were clasped together, pallor overspread her aquiline features, and, though encouraged to proceed, she never did proceed a word further. I disposed of the parallel establishment by private contract, and we became as nearly one as could be expected under the circumstances. But she never could, and she never did, find a phrase satisfactory to her perhaps-too-favourable estimate of my intellect. To the very last (feeble action of liver), she addressed me in the same unfinished terms.”

— Charles Dickens

“I think that the best rock n' roll is about the spirit of being young, the feeling of being 16 and getting crazy with your friends and going out to a show and just that whole feeling.”

— Sebastian Bach

“I'm not a rookie anymore-no more excuses about being young.”

— Adrian Beltre

“Youth is only being in a way like it might be an animal. No, it is not just like being an animal so much as being like one of these malenky toys you viddy being sold in the streets, like little chellovecks made out of tin and with a spring inside and then a winding handle on the outside and you wind it up grrr grrr grrr and off it itties, like walking, O my brothers. But it itties in a straight line and bangs straight into things bang bang and it cannot help what it is doing. Being young is like being like one of these malenky machines.”

— Anthony Burgess

“I suppose it is a gift, being young, but it isn't special. We've all got it, early in life.”

— Edna Ferber

“Spring training means flowers, people coming outdoors, sunshine, optimism and baseball. Spring training is a time to think about being young again.”

— Ernie Banks

“There's so much more (to say) about being young and being a woman, but I feel like not a lot of those stories are being told, so you have to grab onto what ever small truths you can find and present it in the most honest way you can.”

— Jena Malone

“I was never afraid of getting old. I remember being young and thinking, Wow, I can't wait until I'm older because I feel like everything is going to happen then. I don't want to sound pretentious or anything, but I'm always one of the first ones to say, "Let's try that."”

— Mario Sorrenti

“When I sang the line, 'Songs about Old Ireland.Songs about being young again.I wish I was young again,' twice people cried. I saw them.”

— Aoife O'Donovan

“The true art of being young is knowing how to defy gravity and upset as many people as possible while doing it. How to penetrate the great secrets of the universe and damn the torpedoes. How to stir the demons of our destiny ...”

— Mick Rock

“I have a few memories of being young here in the United States, but almost no recollections of being young in Vietnam.”

— Khoi Vinh

“When I see a lot of young faces in the audience, it's just sort of sinking in how important that is. Because you're old enough now to identify them very strongly as being young - whereas before, of course they were young, because you were young. Now it's not like that.”

— Martin Amis

“Being young and trying to catch a glimpse of the depths, of the true self, of the soul, or whatever human beings have called it over the centuries, we often find ourselves surrounded by bossy, hectoring voices trying to short-circuit our personal experience by super-imposing their own disappointments. Much of this bossiness masquerades as an education.”

— David Whyte

“Part of being young is you thinking that gaining 6 lbs. Is the end of the world”

— Melissa McCarthy

“Being bi-racial and being young along with being American and Canadian [allows me to] try and cover all the bases and expand my fan base to a level that has yet to be seen.”

— Drake

“Eighteen is a terrible age, and while I walked around with the conviction that I was somehow more grown-up than my classmates, the truth was that I had merely found a different way of being young.”

— Paul Auster

“To some extent, this urge to break out of the ordinary is present in every generation. Part of being young is desiring something beyond everyday life and a secure job, a yearning for something really truly greater. Is this simply an empty dream that fades away as we become older? No! Men and women were created for something great, for infinity. Nothing else will ever be enough.”

— Pope Benedict XVI

“I feel I'm trying to get this really crap car going, and it just keeps stalling on me. And then other times I feel like my life's a train thundering toward me, and I'm in a car stuck on the crossroads and can't get out. Isn't it great being young!”

— Julie Burchill

“Just being young and growing up in this business is hard. Just growing up in general is hard.”

— Justin Bieber

“I do remember being young.”

— Hillary Clinton

“I think being young in a grownup world, I think it stunted me a little bit. I had to grow up too fast on the outside, but I didn't get to grow up on the inside in the way that you might if you're allowed to fail more.”

— Laura Benanti