Adrian Tomine Quotes

But I am I now; and so many other millions are so irretrievably their own special variety of 'I' that I can hardly bear to think of it. I: how firm a letter; how reassuring the three strokes: one vertical, proud and assertive, and then the two short horizontal lines in quick, smug succession. The pen scratching on the paper…I…I…I…I…I…I.

I watch a lot of teen TV and read a lot of YA novels. I also talk to teens whenever I can. There are cultural differences between when I was a teen and now, but emotions - anger, angst, love - are the same.

There have been times I almost got a persecution complex. I felt like people wouldn't let me grow up. They always saw me as a smiling kid or goofy teenager, no matter how much I'd changed.

'The Catcher in the Rye.' When I was a teenager, that was my book; yes, somebody gets it, somebody gets adolescence.

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.

'Catcher in the Rye.' I feel like any brooding teen loves that book.

I think there is a point in every teenager's life where they are forced to come into themselves.

Imagine a man who stands before a mirror; a stone strikes it, and it falls to ruin all in an instant. And the man learns that he is himself, and not the mirrored man he had believed himself to be.

All teenagers knew this was true. The process of growing up was nothing more than figuring out what doors hadn't yet been slammed in your face. For years, parents tell you that you can be anything, have anything, do anything. That was why she'd been so eager to grow up-until she got to adolescence and hit a big fat wall ofreality. As it turned out, she couldn't have anything she wanted. You didn't get to be pretty or smart or popular just because you wanted it. You didn't control your own destiny, you were too busy trying to fit in.

It happens to many teenagers-that moment when you feel full of resentment or distrust for those adults you once loved unquestioningly.

Peter (Parker) is not that evolved. Peter wants to tell the world he's a good guy: ' Like me, I'm nice.' He's a 19 year-old kid. He's a kid struggling with being misunderstood. We've all been misunderstood. That's universal too. I like being Peter.

When you're young you try to be methodical and philosophical, but reality keeps breaking in.

You get older and you are a whole mess of things, new thoughts, sorry feelings, big plans, enormous doubts, goling along hoping and getting disappointed, over and over again, no wonder I don't recognize my little crayon picture. It appears to be me and it is and it is not.

I used to think I'd be just like them when I grew up, but I am not. And the thing is, somewhere along the way, I stopped wanting to be like them, anyway.

I can't get used to the fact that I'm 68 years old. I still feel like a youngster. I am playing a part even older than 68 - 71 years old. It's kind of startling to see myself in a movie and realize, "Yup. That's exactly what I look like."

Life is amazing, life is odd. Life is not what you expected it to be. Things happen... Growing up takes longer than you think.

It's cute how I used to think this 'barely holding it together' feeling was temporary.

The world's most sensible person and the biggest idiot both stay within us. The worst part is, you can't even tell who is who.

I once was the walrus, now I'm John.

I'd take a look at my own self in the mirror and wonder how it was possible that anybody could manage such an enormous thing as being what he was.

Isn't it true that you start your life a sweet child believing in everything under your father's roof? Then comes the day of the Laodiceans, when you know you are wretched and miserable and poor and blind and naked, and with the visage of a gruesome grieving ghost you go shuddering through nightmare life.

How could I have thought that I needed to cure myself in order to fit into the 'real' world? I didn't need curing, and the world didn't, either; the only thing that did need curing was my understanding of my place in it. Without that understanding - without a sense of belonging to the real world - it was impossible to thrive in an imagined one.

We’d met at a carefree time, a moment full of promise, in its place now were the harsh lessons of the real world.

One must know oneself as one is, not as one wishes to be, which is merely an ideal and therefore fictitious, unreal; it is only that which is that can be transformed, not that which you wish to be.

Nothing is real if you don't believe in who you are!