Rick Riordan Quotes

So much changes in a year when you're a teenager.

'Middle school' is used as shorthand for a time when things change. It's a time a lot of kids feel like they don't even have one good friend.

I'm always thinking about identity. And the middle-school years are a time of exploring questions about who you are and who you want to be. For the first time, you see the world in a broader sense.

Adolescence represents an inner emotional upheaval, a struggle between the eternal human wish to cling to the past and the equally powerful wish to get on with the future.

As a teenager you are at the last stage in your life when you will be happy to hear that the phone is for you.

No matter where you are or where you grow up, you always go through the same awkward moments of being a teenager and growing up and trying to figure out who you are.

Puberty is an extremely traumatic process even if you don't realize it. It kind of lives with you for like 10 years.

Watching kids go from the age of 9 and 10 to 13 is a big, huge jump. The way they speak, their looks, their attitudes, everything changes as you go from being a little kid to a teenager.

Adolescence isn't just about prom or wearing sparkly dresses.

No one ever talks about the moment you found that you were white. Or the moment you found out you were black. That's a profound revelation. The minute you find that out, something happens. You have to renegotiate everything.

The coming-of-age story has sort of become a joke. It's something to capitalize on, and that is painful because when you are coming of age - when you are going through something like that - the genre is so meaningful.

I never got to make that transition from little girl to young woman... and that really screws you up.

I think you do a lot of your growing as a human being between the ages of 13 and 18.

Growing up, I had a bit of an identity crisis.

I had a hard time in middle school. I was never really quite me until I was 16 or 17, and things like bullying didn't matter anymore.

Being a teenager and figuring out who you are is hard enough without someone attacking you.

It seems that one moment I was this little kid only caring about animals and flowers and stuff, and then the next minute I was this raging stew of hormones. I don't know if you've ever been a raging stew of anything, but I wouldn't particularly recommend it.

I do agree to a certain extent that it is unfortunate that I have to be a little more aware of being a kid and growing up and figuring out who I am, but at the same time, it's part of what I love.

Young people, who are still uncertain of their identity, often try on a succession of masks in the hope of finding the one which suits them - the one, in fact, which is not a mask.

If childhood is still a state, it is now chiefly a state of confusion.

Growing up in America, I never really appreciated my culture. I knew what being Hispanic was, but I thought that since I didn't look Hispanic, I was white.

I think there's a level at which you think that there's a reason that you're being singled out, that you're being chosen. As a kid, I was always mistaken for a girl. Before you reach that age where your sexuality starts to display itself, kids can look very androgynous, and I guess I leaned more toward the feminine. All those things were very hard, growing up, because you're trying to create an identity, and you're feeling shameful about the one that you're making. So, I identified with it a lot.

High school is a really strange time - you're not a kid, you're not an adult. You're about to be an adult, you're going to have to make some really intense decisions. It's a really pivotal time to have as much self-confidence as you possibly can. Even if that means you have one friend who supports you completely.

I was actually kind of a hot mess in high school. I did a lot of things in high school I'm not proud of. I wasn't a good student and I wasn't particularly a good daughter. I wasn't very engaged.

That's why I think some people kind of fall off and they end up going crazy because you don't give yourself time to go crazy. That's what you're supposed to do; you are 20, you are supposed to be a mess because you haven't figured it out yet, and 10 years from now I am supposed to have it all together.