Leighton Meester Quotes

I've never forgotten what it's like to be in your early twenties, which is not a particularly easy time. You've left your family, you've left the strictures of high school, and you're trying to break free and form yourself but you have to support yourself as well. We don't really give enough credence to that time of life and to its troubles.

I have a fresh start, now that I've turned 18, which feels like such a symbolic age of independence and hopefully a new phase of my life.

I've been a protected child, but I moved out for further studies when I was 16, and I have travelled quite a bit by myself.

There's a level of protection you need to give to your kids, and then sometimes you need to just let them figure out things on their own.

Young people need their own private places which mothers don't belong to, even if they want mother all around the edge of that.

I'm ready to live on my own. It's a really big step, but I'm ready.

It's not that I don't respect my parents' authority or appreciate all that they did for me, but when I was 18 I was able to move out, and I was out. I feel like a different person since then; I mean, it's obviously a big turning point in life. I feel like I've established myself, and I'm a smarter and more mature for it.

I think a lot of your 20s is trying to figure out who you are - you're on your own; you've got you first job. You've got your first apartment. You're living away from your parents. You're just discovering who you are.

Dorm-room life was a tough transition. You're young, and you realize how much you miss the comfort of home.

I like my space.

You go through so many changes, especially in your twenties.

If I devote myself to other pursuits and contemplations, I must first see, at least, that I do not pursue them sitting upon another man's shoulders. I must get off him first, that he may pursue his contemplations too.

I think that the path that I took was normal in the American society where young women and men are not trained as to how to make the transition from being a girl to being a woman, from being a boy to being a man. And so I think that most young people in America live by trial and error, and not by parental instruction, community guidance.

I left home to go to college, and then I moved back home. I moved back for three years from 21 to 24.

I just love my privacy.

When you grow up your mother says, 'Wear rubbers or you'll catch cold.' When you become an adult you discover that you have the right not to wear rubbers and to see if you catch cold or not. It's something like that.

Becoming an adult means leaving the world of your parents and starting to make your way toward the future that you will share with your peers.

A man can be himself only so long as he is alone, and if he does not love solitude, he will not love freedom, for it is only when he is alone that he is really free.

I think I am an adult.

Even though you're married, you're still individuals. You still have to grow and nurture your individuality.

I moved to Los Angeles when I was about 20, all by myself. It was exciting. I had this moment when I felt like I needed to put on my big-boy pants and just make that leap to see what would happen.

I'm good at my own company.

I was who I was in high school in accordance with the rules of conduct for a normal person, like obeying your mom and dad. Then I got out of high school and moved out of the house, and I just started, for lack of a better term, running free.

The best holiday I ever had was the first one I went on without my parents, when I was 17.

I lived at home till I was 29.