John Steinbeck Quotes

I want to give kids that fall-off-the-bed-laughing feeling. Either that, or the sixth-grade feeling that life is hard - sometimes unbearably hard - and it is ultimately about death. But in the meantime, life can be really funny, too.

It's a very young mistake to assume that life is very serious. I get the joke now.

Teens are not like the weird, dumb dwarves you have around your house. They are actually you when you were younger.

To me, old age is always fifteen years older than I am.

People think, because we're young, we aren't complex, but that's not true. We deal with life and love and broken hearts in the same way a woman a few years older might.

I can honestly say I love getting older. Then again, I never put my glasses on before looking in the mirror.

Oh the innocent girl in her maiden teens knows perfectly well what everything means.

When you are seventeen you aren't really serious.

I laugh at what I used to think was cool when I was growing up. In all seriousness, I thought having braces was cool.

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.

Ultimately life is disease, death and oblivion. It's still better than high school.

Do not worry about avoiding temptation. As you grow older it will avoid you.

All my life I've been taught how to die, but no one ever taught me how to grow old.

They say that children become men, and men become children. Many generations have grown up, become men, and gone hence.

The really frightening thing about middle age is the knowledge that you'll grow out of it.

Life does not cease to be funny when people die any more than it ceases to be serious when people laugh.

I can't be as flip as I once was.

I was a very self-righteous 15-25 year old. Anyway, I wake up every morning and thank God I'm not a kid anymore.

My mind never left 20, because once it does, that's when you start to die.

When we're 16, we have lots of heavy thoughts. And these are the heavy thoughts, where, when we're in our 30s, we look at 16-year olds and sort of scorn it.

When you're 14 and you're with your friends, you laugh about really stupid stuff, but as you get older, the laughter inside you dies. When you're older, you need a bit of help.

I always had the street mentality, but when you're older, you get more mature.

A lot of times, adults confuse growing up or becoming more mature with a sense of seriousness, a sense of boringness, a sense of just stupidness.

When I said, 'I'm only 19, but my mind is old' - at that time, when I said that line, I was 18.

I think that the older I get, the more I play, you realise when it's your time.