John Irving Quotes

You're breaking up, you're getting together, you're changing your life, you're arguing with your parents, you're making terrible mistakes, you're having great triumphs. It's what happens to teenagers.

I think every teenager goes through their angst. People who are like, 'No, I had a perfect adolescence,' make me wonder how that is possible.

I'm glad I went through all the normal teenage dramas that a lot of people go through. I can really relate to 'Secret Life' because I witnessed those similar struggles.

Although I'm a retired teenager, I remember what it was like to be one. I could have sworn I was riding an emotional roller coaster most of the time. Looking back, I'm actually amazed that I survived. Barely.

Adolescents are attracted to tragic heroes. That's why rock stars dress like homeless people. Adolescence is a fall. It's when every child becomes an orphan.

The teenage years are ridiculously crucial and hard and, um, awkward.

In a lot of ways, I wasn't a normal teenager.

Puberty extends into your twenties, for sure, and some people don't get over that until much later in life. I feel like I'm just starting to get over puberty - basically twenty years of insufferable, totally self-obsessed hell.

In the early 2000s, I was going through a lot. I didn't have my head screwed on right. Where I was at as a man, I was still growing up.

Most of what I've written songs about are things that come out of the confusing emotional, spiritual and psychological period of time when you're going through puberty.

I didn't feel so great when I was a teenager, but who does?

Everyone, when you're a teenager and you're growing up, you do feel like your life is dramatic enough to be on a TV screen, but we know that it's not.

I just wanted to do something about the teenage experience; it's such a wonderful and horrible time of life.

What we wanted to do was tell a story that felt relatable to anyone who's been a teenager. We haven't all been a second-generation Pakistani-American girl with superpowers, but we've all been 16 and awkward.

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.

Being a teenager is hard.

High school was a complicated, confusing time for me. I wasn't confident, didn't know who I was, and was hiding from myself a lot.

My teenage life was a little strange.

I was like this weird, edgy 10-year-old. I was figuring out who I was, obviously at the worst time. I had braces and bangs, and it was a nightmare.

Being a teenager is complicated.

I go through so many different phases, just like every teenage girl does.

Like me as a teen - and like many teenagers now - my characters are at a peculiar crossroads in their lives. They desperately seek freedom. But at the same time, they are constantly thwarted.

A lot of shows and movies that have tried to represent teenagers or the chaos that is coming at that age, they shy away from it, romanticize it, or they kind of fantasize what it's like to be a teenager.

When you're teenager, your hormones and your emotions are so tumultuous and so unpredictable. You're just trying to understand yourself.

The search for a personal identity is the life task of a teenager.