You take a 30-year-old. To him, history began the day he was born. He doesn't know how cold it was 70 years ago unless he's told. He doesn't care. He thinks what's happening now is either the best or the worst, whatever it is, ever. Everybody thinks that.
It's just people who grew up in that time are suddenly old enough to be creators themselves, but I think they have a little perspective. I'm 40 now, and I have children of my own. Before I forget my own childhood completely, I want to take some time to take a look at the '80s and think back.
My son, who is 7, he passed a car in a parking lot that was probably a 1998 model, and he said, 'Wow, Dad, look at that old car.' I was looking around for an old car, and I realized that my old car maybe stops at 1965.
My generation is now the door to memory. That is why I am remembering.
To the youngsters of today, I say "Believe in the future, the world is getting better; there still is plenty of opportunity." Why, would you believe it, when I was a kid I thought it was already too late for me to make good at anything.
Every new generation must rewrite history in its own way.
The old always think the world is getting worse; it is for the young, equipped with historical facts, to point out that, compared with 1509, or even 1939, life in 2009 is sweet as honey.
One generation's idea of fast pace might be different from a later generation's.
A lot of people call horror movies 'campy,' and I can certainly see why they think that they are, but being a product of the 80s, I didn't notice that they were campy - I came from a campy generation. I mean, Ronald Reagan is campy. But I don't think they're campy.
Technology is anything that wasn't around when you were born.
I've always been a youth advocate. I mean, that's been my brand, reaching out to young people. All my life, when I've dealt with youth I'd be thinking back to my own experience. Now I look at my kids and think forward.
I've grown up in a generation that questions God for setting boundaries. Does He have the right to set boundaries? I've grown up in a generation that thinks where meeting with a God is an ordinary thing.
Youth as glimpsed by its elders is a story that comes from afar, showing itself as either lovely to look at or a torment to endure.
All generations think the present moment is the greatest but also have this fascination with before their time. I do the same thing. I see old British movies. I'm like, 'Man, I would love to be in London at that time.' But then I wouldn't be able to watch 'The Walking Dead,' I wouldn't have cable, and my pizza options would be limited.
History is always best written generations after the event, when clouded fact and memory have all fused into what can be accepted as truth, whether it be so or not.
My generation of director has no illusions that we are going to be fed and cared for by subsidized theater in America.
When I was turning 40, I felt that there were no books out there that hit the spot in terms of what I wanted to read.
Every generation tailors history to its taste.
Old grandsires talk of yesterday with sorrow, And for our children we reserve tomorrow.
[W]ords are fine, but it has to be what a generation reads into those words.
How strange it is that we of the present day are constantly praising that past age which our fathers abused, and as constantly abusing that present age, which our children will praise.
Babies are unreasonable; they expect far too much of existence. Each new generation that comes takes one look at the world, thinks wildly, "Is this all they've done to it?" and bursts into tears.
Why do people in this age think their own impoverished lives must be the norm of the universe?
Every age has its massive moral blind spots. We might not see them, but our children will.
Each generation supposes that the world was simpler for the one before it.
