John Oates Quotes

For whatever reason, I decided: 'I'm 18, I'm a man, I'm going to grow a moustache' - and it was pathetic for years - it was awful.

I had a mustache when I was 13.

I don't think naturally I tend toward anything that's really distinctly branded as adult. I feel like I sort of write for myself as I would've been at 12 or 13 years old.

A boy has two jobs. One is just being a boy. The other is growing up to be a man.

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.

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.

Nobody understands anyone 18, including those who are 18.

I think growing up is difficult and it's a process that I'm always interested in, with kids and adults, they are often on two different universes.

Yes, but I don't think of the Teen Angel as of an age.

I find the subject of childhood fascinating. I explored this subject in Speak to me of love and I am curious about portraying the often painful transition into the adult world.

Unlike most other children, - especially unlike those of today - who are eager to become men and women as speedily as possible, I had a terror of growing up, which became more and more accentuated as I grew older.

Young alienation, disappointment and heartache is all a part of the first real growing up that we do.

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.

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.

When you are seventeen you aren't really serious.

Kids don't shuffle along in unison on the road to maturity. They slouch toward adulthood at an uneven, highly individual pace.

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.

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.

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

In our house we say 'adolescence' is a western word. We don't believe in it.

When I was growing up in the '70s and '80s, by the time you were 16, you were kind of expected to be an adult. By the time we were 16 and able to drive, certainly by 17 or 18 and into college, you just had very little interaction with your parents.

When I did a study of all the coming-of-age movies that meant a lot to me, whether it was 'The Graduate' or 'Rebel Without a Cause' or 'Dead Poet's Society,' they all had that timeless feel. None of them were completely married to the details of their age. They felt timeless in their treatment of it. That's what made them resonate with me.

The Wood was about young people and the other one is more of a grown up movie.

I wasn't a child at 13, were you?