S. E. Hinton Quotes

I still feel like a girl. I don't quite feel like a woman. I'll probably be 90 and feel like, 'Not a woman yet!'

The area of teenage life is not necessarily rarefied; we've all gone through that period. It's not as rarefied as a western or a space adventure or a gangster film, but it has its own dynamic.

I was raised as a tomboy with boys, and I never really feel like myself when I am really dolled up at premieres and showbiz events.

I feel like I didn't know who I was when I was 15. I don't feel like you're who you are for life, not even when you're 20.

I remember, when I was a little kid, I was good at sports, and I could jump off the high board. And then puberty hit, and suddenly I was looking to boys for direction. I remember that as a great loss.

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

I never felt like someone who was boyish and coming to terms with asking girls out or anything like that, which was what 'The Big Steal' and 'Spotswood' were about. But I guess that's the impression I left on people.

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.

Although I've watched myself making the transition from being a girl to being a woman, I still feel 15 years old. My reflection disagrees.

My teenage life was a little strange.

Teenagers are philosophers. They are thinking about the big things like existence and identity at a time when their identities are changing so fast.

It was tough because I was on the road so much, on top of everything. I went through what every girl goes through emotionally in life, going through high school. It wasn't easy.

I was never good at being a boy, but I was always a good student.

I am not what a girl dreams of.

When Jo's conservative sister Meg says she must turn up her hair now that she is a "young lady," Jo shouts, "I'm not! and if turning up my hair makes me one, I'll wear it in two tails till I'm twenty.... I hate to think I've got to grow up, and be Miss March, and wear long gowns, and look as prim as a China aster! It's bad enough to be a girl anyway, when I like boys' games and work and manners! I can't get over my disappointment in not being a boy; and it's worse than ever now, for I'm dying to go and fight with Papa, and I can only stay at home and knit, like a poky old woman.

I'm more of a tomboy than anything and then you see your name on these Top 50 Most Beautiful People lists and you're like, 'What?'

Life flies by, and it's easy to get lost in the blur. In adolescence, it's 'How do I fit in?' In your 20s, it's 'What do I want to do?' In your 30s, 'Is this what I'm meant to do?' I think the trick is living the questions. Not worrying so much about what's ahead but rather sitting in the grey area - being OK with where you are.

Let me say that the path I did take for a brief period of my life was not of reckless drug use, hurting others, but it was a path of quiet rebellion, of a little experimentation of a darker side of my confusion in a confusing world, lost in the midst of finding my identity.

I didn't know that anything was wrong with me until the media got involved in my life.

I have a fondness for writing about precocious, troubled teenagers, who are alienating, but kind of endearing. It's from remembering so clearly that time in my own life. I experienced myself as more dramatically troubled than I was, but I just remember how it felt.

I'm always interested in how people, myself included, have ideas of themselves, of how they thought they would be, or of how they want to be seen. And the older you get, the world keeps telling you different things about yourself. And how people either adjust to those things and let go of adolescent notions. Or they dig in deeper.

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.

I still feel like a kid sometimes myself so hard to believe that I'm a mom. Now I'm an adult! It only took 38 years!

If I saw my 15-year-old self now, I'd think I wasn't that bad, but back then I perceived myself as awful.

Sixteen is a hard time. A lot of kids are experimenting with things.