Jack Monroe Quotes

I'll never forget when I was 12 years old. I couldn't wait until the day I was 16 and could drive a car. I thought that'd be the end of life's problems. I mean, you can drive! What is there left? And then I turned 16 and realized there were still problems.

I wouldn't go back on my old days, though; everybody needs to have their wild years. It's just a question of when and I'd rather have had them early than be doing it as a mid-life crisis type thing.

I thought I was an old soul, and that I knew life, but then starting the real life, I figured I am completely new.

Youth is that period when a young boy knows everything but how to make a living.

I know I felt like I was ready to be an adult long before the rest of the world agreed. I'd already realized that a lot of grown-ups didn't know any more than I did, and some of them were even dumber than I was, and even the ones who were smarter weren't using their smarts for things I necessarily considered worthwhile.

Growing up is mostly the process of having to acknowledge the differences between your world and the whole world.

It's just this feeling of when you're a kid, you have these ideas about the world and about people in your life that don't always hold up as you get older and start to realise that things are more complex than you might've realised. That's always a big part of a coming-of-age story.

I think that the path that I took was normal in the American society where young women and men are not trained as to how to make the transition from being a girl to being a woman, from being a boy to being a man. And so I think that most young people in America live by trial and error, and not by parental instruction, community guidance.

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.

The romantic idealism of my youth has been replaced with realism and hard work at what I love.

I was who I was in high school in accordance with the rules of conduct for a normal person, like obeying your mom and dad. Then I got out of high school and moved out of the house, and I just started, for lack of a better term, running free.

I was wanting to be a kid at 18 instead of being a young woman.

Adolescence, that swampy zone between safety and power, is best patrolled by adults armed with sense and mercy, not guns and a badge.

What I try to do for my readers is to pass on some of the things that I found out about being thirteen after doing it for forty years.

Even as kids reach adolescence, they need more than ever for us to watch over them. Adolescence is not about letting go. It's about hanging on during a very bumpy ride.

I think that when you are a teenager, it's the smartest you will ever be in your life. Teenagers are so resilient and strong, it's just amazing.

I always imagined that magically, at some point, I would settle into this very easy and refined sophistication, but it turns out that who you are at eleven is pretty much who you are at 27, so I don't know how much I've learned over the years.

I am happy being able to play roles with people my age because once you do something really mature there is no turning back.

I started out myself rather late you see, I was 18.

I've grown up a lot, I'm on my own, and I've learned some valuable life lessons.

I have this sense that I didn't really start growing up until my twenties.

I feel like I experienced my 20s in all their glory and all their disastrousness.

I had a very brilliant father who was not only intellectual, but was street-smart and very curious to boot. The day I found out that he didn't know everything, I grew up. It was a shock. I just thought that the man was the end-all of everything, and he knew the answer to everything. Then I found out I'd have to find out my own answers.

My mother felt it was time that I had some parental control, so I went off to America and went to New York.

I think part of being an adult is leaving the fairytale behind.