youth struggle Quotes

Say a prayer for the lost generation, who spin the wheel out of desperation.

It's so hard for every young person, trying to figure out the adult you want to be.

My father left us when I was 10, so I had to make enough money for us to be able to live in a house because my brother went in the service during Vietnam and I was sole support of my mother. And she had no skills, really, except to clean other people's houses. So I had to have a bunch of jobs, you know, as well as music.

When I was younger, I wasn't making it, and I was mad at everybody who was.

I auditioned in Chicago for Juilliard and didn't get in. I was basically living in a back room of my parents' house, paying rent and not doing anything with my life. I'd like to say it was patriotic to join the Marines, but it was also that I was doing nothing honorable with my life and spending too much time at McDonald's.

Adolescents are attracted to tragic heroes. That's why rock stars dress like homeless people. Adolescence is a fall. It's when every child becomes an orphan.

Youths are passed through schools that don’t teach, then forced to search for jobs that don’t exist and finally left stranded in the street to stare at the glamorous lives advertised around them.

Buffy's very similar to me to me when I was growing up. A child in an adult world, sort of trapped between the two. Does Buffy go to the prom or does she save the world from demons?

On 'Sufferer,' I'm talking about the younger generation that has no other option for success than to find a gun somewhere. I try to appeal to them: 'I know you a sufferer, but it doesn't mean that you can't or shouldn't expect any better.' It's a lot different than from what I usually say, like, 'Get busy, shake that thing.'

American youth is looking for a reason to die.

My twenties were a write-off. It's a cruel illness, because you can't see it and you can hide it so well.

The younger generation is essentially idealistic. This applies to the Iranian youth as well. In addition, the youth in Iran face certain difficulties... the Iranian youth need more freedom. They are struggling for more freedom and democracy. This commands great respect.

As a teenager, I ached to grow up even more than I dreaded to. I craved escape from my parents' impositions on what I believed.

I was a hard fit at a young age. I didn't make sense as an ingenue or a leading love-interest lady.

But when I found out that Jamey Rodemeyer had made an It Gets Better video only months before taking his own life, I felt indescribable despair.

I have younger friends who are in this pinch where they feel they've been counted out before they've had a chance to prove themselves. They've inherited a lot of debt - not just student debt but environmental debt, political debt. They really feel squeezed.

I'm able to go out there, and I'm really able to be, like, unabashedly myself. And I want somebody who's young, who's struggling, who's not sure if it's OK if they are themselves to know that it's OK.

I used to listen to 'Ready to Die' around the time I dropped out of college. I was scrambling for work and money.

As if at the age of eighteen life already sucked beyond any hope of improvement.

Suddenly it wasn't only a personal thing to me. I could picture hundreds and hundreds of boys living on the wrong sides of cities, boys with black eyes who jumped at their own shadows. Hundreds of boys who maybe watched sunsets and looked at stars and ached for something better. I could see boys going down under street lights because they were mean and tough and hated the world, and it was too late to tell them that there was still good in it, and they wouldn't believe you if you did.

How strange that the young should always think the world is against them - when in fact that is the only time it is for them.

Anybody who's gone through puberty has understood what it feels like to be an outcast and alone.

The young know how truly difficult and dreadful youth can be. Their youth is wasted on everyone else, that's the horror. The young have no authority, no respect.

If you had told me when I was 18 that I wouldn't have made it until I was 29, I would have said, Forget it.