Rick Famuyiwa Quotes

Coming-of-age stories, people roll their eyes.

Youth is a time when we find the books we give up but do not get over.

I really like coming-of-age dramas. It's probably the most intense period in anyone's life, those years before you become an adult. Dramatically, there's so much to explore there. And it's nice to be around young talent coming through.

There aren't a lot of films about adolescents or quote-unquote coming-of-age films that are realistic nowadays.

A certain point came when I wanted to document growing-up adventures.

If you make a film about childhood, you've got to pick a moment - you know, 'The 400 Blows.'

I cried on my 18th birthday. I thought 17 was such a nice age. You're young enough to get away with things, but you're old enough, too.

'Superbad' was such a personal movie.

Quite often somebody will say, What year do your books take place? and the only answer I can give is, In childhood.

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.

A lot of first novels are coming-of-age stories. A lot are autobiographical.

I've never understood why people consider youth a time of freedom and joy. It's probably because they have forgotten their own.

When I was a kid, I thought it was tough.

Being a kid and growing up is such a cool part of life.

We forget when we're all grown up. 16 was a long time ago. It's hard to remember how freakin' difficult it is as 16! Life is not easy, and you're trying to figure stuff out.

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 think the child I was until 12 was so much more interesting than the teenager I became.

'Carrie Diaries' is very heartfelt and earnest in a lot of ways.

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

I loved everything about being ten, eleven, and twelve years old, and seem to make most of my heroines and heroes that age so I can reexperience all those pitfalls and wonderful discoveries. It helps me to figure out my own life when I write from that eleven year old place!

For me, there's a deeper genre appreciation for what a coming of age story can be about. To apply that to a superhero world, for me, that was very exciting.

There's so many great coming-of-age movies to steal from, and I feel like I just tried to steal from them all equally.

Growing up is hard, love. Otherwise everyone would do it.

Four or five years - nothing at all. But no one over thirty could understand this peculiarly weighted and condensed time, from late teens to early twenties, a stretch of life that needed a name, from school leaver to salaried professional, with a university and affairs and death and choices in between. I had forgotten how recent my childhood was, how long and inescapable it once seemed. How grown up and how unchanged I was.

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.