Susanna Kaysen Quotes

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.

Although I sometimes enjoy writing from an adult's perspective, I feel dedicated to the coming of age story - that part of a young person's life where he must make a decision that will change his life forever. I still remember what it's like to be twelve years old.

I think that every human - and this is something, you know, like, your years from 14 to, like, 23 are kind of, like, super, super existential, and you're figuring out life.

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

I was between 14 and 15, when I went through my angsty period. I was never very rebellious. I never did things to rebel against society, or against my parents, but I did think I knew everything. Then, one day, I woke up and realized I was a dot in this universe, and that quickly dissipated.

Many of the things that I have written on have focused, at least a big part of the story, on adolescents. I think that in that period of life, so much happens, and it's the period of life where you're forming into an adult. In certain ways, you're already an adult and in certain ways you're still a kid.

Adolescents are not monsters. They are just people trying to learn how to make it among the adults in the world, who are probably not so sure themselves.

We're naturally programmed to endure a muddle of emotions as we leave childhood behind.

High school is just horrible in general. So, I think it was a good time for me to have stopped acting. I got to be normal in high school.

Don't laugh at a youth for his affectations; he is only trying on one face after another to find a face of his own.

It's embarrassing to go through any rebellious stage in front of people that you love and respect, and yet I'm glad I did.

Kids don't shuffle along in unison on the road to maturity. They slouch toward adulthood at an uneven, highly individual pace.

I woke in bits, like all children, piecemeal over the years. I discovered myself and the world, and forgot them, and discovered them again.

I try to find my deepest, often hidden feelings about what's working and what's not. This is difficult because I do lie to myself without being aware that that's what I'm doing.

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.

Adolescence is a new birth, for the higher and more completely human traits are now born.

People forget that when you're 16, you're probably more serious than you'll ever be again. You think seriously about the big questions.

I wouldn't say I'm stuck in my adolescence, but I think, like a lot of people, I carry my teen years with me. I feel really in touch with those feelings, and how intense and complicated life seems in those years.

Teens are passionate, questioning, curious, have a bit of the idealism I still cling to, and they're making decisions for the first time that can alter the course of their lives - and sometimes, the course of the world.

I think I've been lucky enough to have had an extended adolescence. I'm a lot like I was when I was 15.

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.

I did keep detailed journals from about fifth grade on, and every so often as I was growing up, I would re-read them and reflect on the previous years of my life.

I think high school's very difficult. You're figuring out your own power and your effect on other people. You look back and see how you spent so much energy on figuring out things with your parents or your peers.

The characters in the book grow up with us. My voice has broken as well.

Adolescence is the most Technicolor time in our lives. It's the time when adulthood is new and we care most about it. It contains the highs and lows that excite me as a writer.