Paul Auster Quotes

Although I sometimes enjoy writing from an adult's perspective, I feel dedicated to the coming of age story - that part of a young person's life where he must make a decision that will change his life forever. I still remember what it's like to be twelve years old.

The thing about adolescence is that you are emerging from a state of obscurity. You are coming out into the world from your family. Your family can seem normal because it is your family and all you know, but in fact it is a mess.

Like many other people of my generation, I don't think I ever really bothered to grow up. I wasn't ever really a proper teenager until I was about 19, and maybe I got a bit stuck there, because it seemed to go on and on.

The coming-of-age story has sort of become a joke. It's something to capitalize on, and that is painful because when you are coming of age - when you are going through something like that - the genre is so meaningful.

I always think that period between the ages of 18 and 24 is such a bizarre stage, and the two people at either end are always very different.

I feel like at 18, you're half of someone else, as opposed to all of yourself. You're still figuring yourself out.

Many of the things that I have written on have focused, at least a big part of the story, on adolescents. I think that in that period of life, so much happens, and it's the period of life where you're forming into an adult. In certain ways, you're already an adult and in certain ways you're still a kid.

I was a 'young adult' when I wrote 'The Outsiders,' although it was not a genre at the time. It's an interesting time of life to write about, when your ideals get slammed up against reality, and you must compromise.

Fifteen is such a weird age to be. Nobody treats you like an adult, but you desperately want to be one. You still have these childlike aspects, but you're just kind of coming into the world.

I think when you're 14 years old, I think you're sort of looking for markers that prove you're an adult and you're independent of your parents.

Adolescence is a modern construct and very American in so many ways.

But, on another level it's really sort of this really cool coming of age story, it reminds me of like The Breakfast Club or something like that, if I can be so bold to associate with The Breakfast Club.

Most of us remember adolescence as a kind of double negative: no longer allowed to be children, we are not yet capable of being adults.

What is youth except a man or woman before it is ready or fit to be seen?

17 is the weirdest age, because you can't figure out if you want to grow up or be a child.

Post-adolescence reaches usually into the late 30s.

I think that until we're 21, human beings don't get to know themselves very much.

I read Jilly Cooper when I was on the verge of just growing up and I was becoming a woman.

It's [high school] an interesting time in your life because you're trying to act older and mature but you really have no idea what you're doing. You're scared and it's okay to be scared. It's okay to not know completely what you want or what you should be doing and to stumble a little bit.

Youth is a malady of which one becomes cured a little every day.

When people say you're going to be so different at 22 or 23, when you're 16, you're like, I'm so not! And then you change drastically.

Growing up is a ritual, more deadly than religion, more complicated than baseball, for there seem to be no rules. Everything is experienced for the first time.

I always think that I’m still this 13-year old boy that doesn’t really know how to be an adult, pretending to live my life, taking notes for when I’ll really have to do it.

It seems to me that the years between eighteen and twenty-eight are the hardest, psychologically. It’s then you realize this is make or break, you no longer have the excuse of youth, and it is time to become an adult – but you are not ready.

When I did 'Fast Times,' I felt very close emotionally to the characters. I liked those characters because they all had to work, so they were dealing with adult problems even though they were very immature, and I could relate to that.