Richard Greenberg Quotes

I was born in 1952, so obviously the sixties were important. That's when I came of age. It was also a revolutionary period, a complete break with the generation before us in terms of culture, literature, music, and in politics, of course. 1968 was an important year; I was 16, and the world became clear to me, visible, so to say.

When I was young in the 1960s, all the world watched the youth. Everywhere was the sensation of wanting to break the chains but to do something beautiful. It is my privilege to have beauty always near me.

Anyone born in the year 1950 who grew to fancy themselves as a soulful 18-year-old bought 'Songs of Leonard Cohen' upon its original release in 1968. For many of them, it was the beginning of a lifelong friendship.

The 1960s were really a life-changing time.

My coming of age was in the '70s. A lot of people look back on it as a grim decade, but I look back on it as a liberating time.

I remember the youth movement in 1968. It started on American university campuses as a protest against the Vietnam war, then came to Paris, Frankfurt and Berlin. Within a year, you had an uprising of youth against their elders.

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

I think I am attracted to that time in life when your worldview is still forming in small ways.

You don't know who you are when you're 14.

It was only when I got to 21 that my personality started coming out a little bit more.

I was very head-strong, and this was the Vietnam War era - You did not listen to your parents or other authority figures. You didn't share their values. No one did in my circle. It was OK to rebel.

I feel like we're always learning about ourselves, but at twelve, you're learning big things that shape your identity.

High school is really when I came into my own.

I don't think I've grown up easily.

Somewhere in the '60s, actors became wimps and basket-case psychotics.

When you are sixteen you do not know what your parents know, or much of what they understand, and less of what's in their hearts. This can save you from becoming an adult too early, save your life from becoming only theirs lived over again--which is a loss. But to shield yourself--as I didn't do--seems to be an even greater error, since what's lost is the truth of your parents' life and what you should think about it, and beyond that, how you should estimate the world you are about to live in.

Waking, after all, was an almost natal state. You surfaced without history, then spent the blinks and yawns reassembling your past, shuffling the shards into chronological order before fortifying yourself for the present.

And perhaps our awareness is the first step to our liberation.

Are you aware of the significance of every thought, of every reaction that you happen to have?

In general confusion youth recognizes itself and rejoices.

It's you who are telling me; opening my eyes to things I'd looked at so long that I'd ceased to see them.

Distinctly different as a child, as an adolescent, in his prime and in his old age, man considers himself as one, not because he acts, but because he knows.

I think that's why I wanted to write about seventh grade. I'd say seventh grade is a time when kids are really exploring a lot and becoming aware of the world around them in a deeper way. And they just have sort of have a wider appreciation of what's happening around them. They are seeing themselves from the outside more than they had before.

If you are ready to wake up, you are going to wake up. If you're not you are going to stay pretending that you are just a poor little me.