Samin Nosrat Quotes

As a teenager, I ached to grow up even more than I dreaded to. I craved escape from my parents' impositions on what I believed.

I'm interested in youth culture - when your parents are running your life, but you think you're the big man - but I'm not trying to make a statement.

Being a teenager is chaotic because you're kind of coming into your own, but you're not an adult; you're fighting with your parents over responsibilities and freedom.

I don't know what 15-year-old doesn't have a desire to separate themselves from their parents and prove their independence.

You grow up a certain way, and you make decisions within your family, but then you go to college, and the decisions become harder. You are away from home, from the influence of your parents, dealing with peer pressure. There's a lot of stuff that goes on in college.

I think, a lot of times, people don't want to do what their parents do because they want to be their own person.

I am no longer content to be the scared, obedient schoolgirl. Who are you, a stranger, to tell me what I can and cannot do?

Nobody will tell me what I can or I cannot do.

That's what you do when you have a really strict family and you rebel - you just go do whatever you can that would make their skin crawl. I wanted all the sexiest stuff I could find, and that was a very empowering moment for me, to use my money that I earned and buy things that no one else might see me wear - but I was going to wear them and feel powerful.

I refuse to act the way someone expects me to.

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.

All my life I been doin' what people tell me to do. Now, I'm telling them.

I remember when I was a kid, with the acting thing, I resented it because, you know, you don't want to do what your parents want you to do.

Turning 16 is kind of scary because when you're 16, you go from being a kid and then you can drive and are more of a young adult in a way.

Becoming an adult means leaving the world of your parents and starting to make your way toward the future that you will share with your peers.

I do not bow. I do not obey. I do not 'worship.'

By the time you're 18, 19, you know yourself, and you shouldn't go against your gut feeling, which is a temptation in the first year of university.

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.

My son is old enough to respond to my work. To me, that's what it is all about.

I will not have my life narrowed down. I will not bow down to somebody else's whim or to someone else's ignorance.

I lived at home till I was 29.

I've never been a yes man.

I just remember that pivotal moment when you're a young adult, and you realize that these authority figures are human beings, too, and they're figuring out their lives just as you are, and they're flawed.

When you get to your mid-20s, you start to feel responsibilities for the things that you do and the people around you. It's a cool age.

The whole 'bad girl' thing allows me to mess up sometimes. And I have freedom to say more of what I want to.