88 Coming-Of-Age Quotes

The transition from adolescence to adulthood is a journey filled with growth, discovery, and a myriad of emotions. It's a time when individuals begin to truly understand themselves and the world around them. Coming-of-age stories, whether in literature, film, or personal experiences, capture these pivotal moments and the wisdom that comes with them. In this collection, we’ve gathered 88 of the most poignant and inspiring coming-of-age quotes that encapsulate the essence of growing up. These quotes are not just reflections of youth but timeless nuggets of wisdom that resonate with all ages, reminding us of the universal journey we all share.

1. “When a child first catches adults out -- when it first walks into his grave little head that adults do not always have divine intelligence, that their judgments are not always wise, their thinking true, their sentences just -- his world falls into panic desolation. The gods are fallen and all safety gone. And there is one sure thing about the fall of gods: they do not fall a little; they crash and shatter or sink deeply into green muck. It is a tedious job to build them up again; they never quite shine. And the child's world is never quite whole again. It is an aching kind of growing.” - John Steinbeck

2. “For the first time I realized adults could back themselves into corners so remote that love, or its memory, could no longer reach them.” - Kirby Wright

3. “Only half a page left now. Shall I fill it with 'I love you, I love you'-- like father's page of cats on the mat? No. Even a broken heart doesn't warrant a waste of good paper.” - Dodie Smith

4. “I have really sinned. I am going to pause now, and sit here on the mound repenting in deepest shame...” - Dodie Smith

5. “It's great that you can listen and be a shoulder to someone, but what about when someone doesn't need a shoulder? What if they need the arms or something like that? You can't just sit there and put everybody's lives ahead of yours and think that counts as love. You just can't. You have to do things.” - Stephen Chbosky

6. “Whose little boy are you?” - James Baldwin

7. “I imagined the lies the valedictorian was telling them right now. About the exciting future that lies ahead. I wish she'd tell them the truth: Half of you have gone as far in life as you're ever going to. Look around. It's all downhill from here. The rest of us will go a bit further, a steady job, a trip to Hawaii, or a move to Phoenix, Arizona, but out of fifteen hundred how many will do anything truly worthwhile, write a play, paint a painting that will hang in a gallery, find a cure for herpes? Two of us, maybe three? And how many will find true love? About the same. And enlightenment? Maybe one. The rest of us will make compromises, find excuses, someone or something to blame, and hold that over our hearts like a pendant on a chain.” - Janet Fitch

8. “The one thing I do remember is that as I retraced my steps through all the familiar streets of my life, Inow felt completely lost.” - Carolyn Mackler

9. “If you can keep your head when all about youAre losing theirs and blaming it on you,If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,But make allowance for their doubting too;!” - Rudyard Kipling

10. “She didn't want to be considered a woman yet, wasn't ready to be the recipient of jewelry from men.” - Sarah Blakley-Cartwright

11. “Time collapsed into a delicate dark pencil brushed against oureyebrows, the emergent rumble of crowds gathering above our heads. Weslid into our costumes. Pirate, outlaw, futuristic rebels. Red,purple, gold. Chains hanging from our belts, tight black trousers. Wewere moved upstairs, closer to the stage. Finally, we heard thecannon's roar: Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome... Tanzarrecording artists... THE MASTER PLANETS!" The world shot forward. Westepped into the spotlight.” - Donald Gallinger

12. “She was neither white nor black, Fyre nor Aquanite; she was a dame of the White King, and it was up to her, and her alone, to choose what path her life would take.” - Christine E. Schulze

13. “Me parece que de nada vale correr si siempre ha de irse por el mismo camino, cerrado, de nuestra personalidad. Unos seres nacen para vivir, otros para trabajar, y otros para mirar la vida. Yo tenia un pequeño y ruin papel de espectadora. Imposible salirme de él. Imposible libertarme. Una tremenda congoja fue para mí lo único real en aquellos momentos.” - Carmen Laforet

14. “As for me I will follow the path of the pink bunnies.” - Magenta Periwinkle

15. “To prove to [her friend, Swedish diplomat Count] Gyllenborg that she was not superficial, Catherine composed an essay about herself, "so that he would see whether I knew myself or not." The next day, she wrote and handed to Gyllenborg an essay titled 'Portrait of a Fifteen-Year-Old Philosopher.' He was impressed and returned it with a dozen pages of comments, mostly favorable. "I read his remarks again and again, many times [Catherine later recalled in her memoirs]. I impressed them on my consciousness and resolved to follow his advice. In addition, there was something else surprising: one day, while conversing with me, he allowed the following sentence to slip out: 'What a pity that you will marry! I wanted to find out what he meant, but he would not tell me.” - Robert K. Massie

16. “And then I know I'm being a man, not just some kid who's upset and wants it his way.” - Angela Johnson

17. “I wanted to have a good relationship. One that's romantic and dramatic, like in the movies. But I finally became a woman at 17 and learned that men aren't really that simple.” - Ai Yazawa

18. “Could a scar be like the rings of a tree, reopened with each emotional season?” - Magenta Periwinkle

19. “On est forcé d'être des enfants toute sa vie. C'est pour ça que ceux qui veulent devenir des hommes sont malheureux. Vous voulez chanter l'opéra? On rit de vous. Vous voulez vous conduire en monsieur avec les femmes? Elles vous traitent de tapette si vous n'êtes pas champion avec des muscles gros comme ça. Vous voulez avoir une bonne position dans un bureau? La compétence, c'est toujours les autres qui l'ont.” - Roger Lemelin

20. “Creativity is the catalyst to the future.” - Ann Marie Frohoff

21. “My name is Arianna Morganna Brittany DuLac--you can imagine why I went by the name Ryan.” - Priya Ardis

22. “Do I look like I want to be involved in your teen love saga? Ask someone who cares.” - Priya Ardis

23. “Did you recently turn into a jerk or have you been one since birth?” - Priya Ardis

24. “He’s so powerful. Who knows maybe he’s advanced past eating” - Priya Ardis

25. “Soft sun shone down on a misty cathedral at the opposite end of a football-field length courtyard. The cathedral had a long pointed tower with beautiful rose and ivory stained glass windows. Pink-petal flowers and deep green ivy climbed the stones from the ground to it’s roof. A large fountain stood in the middle of the courtyard with water falling from several lion’s heads. Between the misty air and rolling slope of the earth, the grounds reminded me of a long lost fairy tale.” - Priya Ardis

26. “They stood in the courtyard of Swangard Palace, too cold to be comfortable despite the sun, and they looked fully on one another, knowing that they were friends, and would always be.A lot of water under this bridge too, Mark thought, with something like awe. He was growing older. Old enough to feel the current of what had been flowing under him, leading to his future. Old enough to look back over his shoulder, and see his past behind him, and grieve for what was gone, and honour its memory.He felt, suddenly, how much it would hurt him if Val died; felt an echo of that pain, knowing that the Valerian he had known, fluffy and peering and hapless and altogether wonderful: this Valerian was already dying. Not physically, of course, but the man he remembered from that first night in Swangard Palace would be gone the next time they met, though his ghost would linger on in Val forever, and in their memories.Three cheers for ghosts, Mark thought. Three cheers for the dead.Of course Val would be much the same: better, even. As full of wonder and delight, with big pockets full of puzzles and fascinating stories about the lives of ants and ingenious designs for windmills that would do your washing. And they would still be friends, excellent friends. It could even be better next time.But it would never be the same.” - Sean Stewart

27. “I'm too old to be ignorant as I am." --Twelve-year-old Gabriella to the general, who does not want her to know about Emmett Till and the world's brutality.” - Elle Thornton

28. “It seems like our town has closed down these days leading up to the funeral. Old people still sit on their porches and talk, but their conversations aren't sprinkled with laughter anymore. Since the new, little kids haven't played outside, as if their moms are afraid someone might snatch them out of their yards and send them off to war.” - Kimberly Willis Holt

29. “And in this moment, I realize one reason it's so great to have a best friend is sometimes, like right now, Cal and I are thinking the very same thing.” - Kimberly Willis Holt

30. “Zachary smiles, and I wonder if he's felling different. Because standing out here waist deep in Gossimer Lake, next to my best friend, I'm feeling different-light and good and maybe even holy.” - Kimberly Willis Holt

31. “The Mozart sonata Dad picked out begins to play. When we hear the first note, we open the sacks and the ladybugs escape through the opening, taking flight. It's as if someone has dumped rubies from heaven. Soon they will land on the plants in search of bollworm eggs. But right now they are magic-red ribbons flying over our heads, weaving against the pink sky, dancing up there with Mozart.” - Kimberly Willis Holt

32. “I work in a restaurant in an airport in Taiwan. I am eighteen years old and I don’t like my job because everyone gets on planes and leaves. And I want to leave too.” - Kerem Mermutlu

33. “Little Joe was still behind him. Eli could feel it. He wanted to look back, but he couldn’t. The tears were too close. If he were Fancy, he’d turn around and kick and buck and moo and do just about anything to keep his calf near. But Eli wasn’t Fancy; he was a farmer.” - Sandra Neil Wallace

34. “Why did you wear heels? How are you supposed to fight a gargoyle in what you're wearing?” - Priya Ardis

35. “Life is a valuable and unique opportunityto discover who you are.But it seems as soon as you nearanswering that age-old question,something unexpected always happensto alter your course.And who it is you thought you weresuddenly changes.Then comes the frustrating realizationthat no matter how long life endures,no matter how many experiencesare muddled through in this existence,you may never really be ableto answer the question....Who am I? Because the answer, like the seasons,constantly, subtly, inevitably changes.And who it is you are today,is not the same person you will be tomorrow.” - Richelle Goodrich

36. “She bought seeds and raided nurseries and mulched and composted and spent full days with her hands full of earth, coaxing life our of the dry, dull grass my father had spent years pushing a mower over.” - Sarah Dessen

37. “Marilynn...passed out black cases to everyone. I opened mine to find an iPad inside. Several candidates whistled. Despite my agitated state, it impressed me too. Maybe wizard school wasn’t going to be as lame as I had thought.“All of your schedules and assignments will be done on these,” Marilynn explained. “The whole school is on these. We’ve had them for awhile now.” - Priya Ardis

38. “When I grow up, maybe I will bethe first one to circle the sea.Or maybe I will just spend all my daydoing everything my way.Maybe I will be in a world of my ownI just hope not alone.I just know that whatever I doI will never, ever forget about you.” - Oliver Neubert

39. “Is it possible that that's all maturity is? Speaking better? Is it possible that everybody in the world, is just a dumb, stupid kid acting like a grown-up because they can sound like one and look like one? It almost seems easy.” - Bob Flaherty

40. “Vane grabbed me. “DuLac, let’s chat.”Chat. British-speak for “Stand still while I yell at you.” - Priya Ardis

41. “Vane’s lips tightened to suppress a smile. “Why so hostile, love?”“You whacked me on the head with a ball!”“You deserved it.” - Priya Ardis

42. “Matt was almost completely naked. A tattered loincloth and an ugly chain with a yellow diamond were his only apparel.” - Priya Ardis

43. “I caught his hand. “What do you want me to do?”Leaning down, he kissed the pulse beating on my neck just above the damaged skin. “Tomorrow, I need you to die.” - Priya Ardis

44. “Rough palms cradled my face while my fingers gripped the pillow on either side of his. Lips, teeth, tongue, mingled together. I ate him up and didn’t let go until I had to come up for air.” - Priya Ardis

45. “The principles of storytelling do not change. Going home. Coming of age. Sin and redemption. The hero. The journey, The power of love. They are hardwired into us, just like our taste buds process sweet, sour, bitter, and salt. Can a new voice come up with something startling and creative and unprecedented? Absolutely. Can they invent a fifth taste? No. No, they can’t. Can they make it so we don’t like sweet anymore? No, no they can’t.” - Chris Dee

46. “Life was like that when you were fifteen and knobby-kneed and you only had a handful of choices. Your world was small and cruel and narrow-minded and breathtaking.” - Colleen Curran

47. “Plus, I happened to be a history nerd. Why else would I be interested in a guy born in the year 519?” - Priya Ardis

48. “The combination of razor-sharp wit (completely real) and his credentials (completely fake) had won them over in the end.” - Priya Ardis

49. “Well, can you tell her that?"He looked down at his feet. "I will. I will."Guy-speak for, "I plan to keep avoiding her until she gives up.” - Priya Ardis

50. “You'll get fired if anyone finds out about us!""So many rules in this century," Vane muttered.” - Priya Ardis

51. “If I were to lock you up in a dungeon, I guarantee you would not be bored.” - Priya Ardis

52. “The last declaration he'd made to me hung between us. The L word. The one that had nothing to do with like.” - Priya Ardis

53. “Almost everyone first realized they were becoming a grown woman when some dude did something nasty to them. ...It was mostly men yelling shit from cars. Are they a patrol sent out to let girls know they've crossed into puberty? If so, it's working.” - Tina Fey

54. “You see, there is a major downfall to living in a tourist town. You guessed it, the constant turnover of new people. You cannot really connect with anyone because no one is ever here for more than two weeks every year, if they comeback at all. The intruders never thought about what happens once they leave. ~ Stella” - Michele Richard

55. “Where should I go?" -Alice. "That depends on where you want to end up." - The Cheshire Cat.” - Lewis Carroll

56. “Resting on the roots of this old oak I lean back against his knotted trunk, shine my granny smith on my sleeve And ponder the days…” - Kellie Elmore

57. “Perhaps that was the point; life, if you did it right, meant learning and changing. If you didn't, you died- or stopped growing - which amounted to more or less the same thing. So I would slide in and out of different roles until I discovered the one that fit me best.-Deuce, (183)” - Ann Aguirre

58. “Do you think we can be friends?” I asked.He stared up at the ceiling. “Probably not, but we can pretend.” - Priya Ardis

59. “He’d used the amulet to read my thoughts again. I pictured smacking him in the face.” - Priya Ardis

60. “I noticed him right away. No, it wasn’t his lean, rugged face. Or the dark waves of shiny hair that hung just a little too long on his forehead. It wasn’t the slim, collarless biker jacket he wore, hugging his lean shoulders. It was the way he stood. The confident way he waited in the cafeteria line to get a slice of pizza. He didn’t saunter. He didn’t amble. He stood at the center, and let the other people buzz around him. His stance was straight and sure.” - Priya Ardis

61. “Unfortunately, I am only myself. I am scared and alone and unsure, but I am practicing. I am scared and alone and unsure, but that doesn't mean I always will be.Like AJ repeating words, I can repeat being me, until I start to believe it.” - Lisa Burstein

62. “This town of churches and dreams; this town I thought I would lose myself in, with its backward ways and winding roads leading to nowhere; but, I found myself instead. -Magic in the Backyard (excerpt from American Honey)” - Kellie Elmore

63. “Sometimes milestones are not measured by the accomplishments of society, but by those of integrity.” - Tamara Rose Blodgett

64. “There comes a time in everyone’s life—and I do mean in everyone’s life—when you ask yourself what it is that you’ve been doing with your life. Sometimes you even realize that whatever you’ve been doing all your life, you’ve been doing it wrong. Dead wrong… Son, you want that realization to hit you when you’re 70? Or 50? Or when you’re still young, with your whole life still ahead of you?” - Ali Sheikh

65. “Both the two of us knew it. We watched the lie go up big and slow between us, then it burst like a spit bubble. They always burst before too long.” - Stephen Kelman

66. “I was not much used to women except for mothers. Everything I did, they did different.” - Daniel Woodrell

67. “94 was a good year to be twelve. Star Wars still had two more years as Box Office King, cartoons were still hand-drawn, and the Disney "D" still looked like a backwards "G." Words like "Columbine," "Al Qaeda" and "Y2K" were not synonymous with "terror," and 9-1-1 was an emergency number instead of a date. At twelve years old, summer still mattered. Monarch caterpillars still crawled beneath every milkweed leaf. Dandelions (or "wishes" as Mara called them) were flowers instead of pests. And divorce was still considered a tragedy. Before Mara, carnivals didn't make me sick.” - Jake Vander Ark

68. “The night seemed suddenly defiled by the absence of music, as if the silence itself was injecting a sickness that only another song could cure.” - Jake Vander Ark

69. “She had a woman’s swagger at twelve-and-a-half. Hair: strawberry-blonde, and I vaguely recall a daisy in the crook of her ear. She was an inch taller than me, two with the ponytail; smooth cheeks and darling brown eyes that marbled in luscious contrast with her magnolia skin; cream, melting to peach, melting to pink. She beamed like a cherub without the baby fat; a tender neck; pristine lips that would never part for a dirty word. Her body--of no interest to me at the time--was wrapped from neck to toes with home-made footie pajamas, the kind they make for toddlers, but I didn’t laugh; the girl filled that silly one-piece ensemble as if it were couture.” - Jake Vander Ark

70. “Judge that boy if you must; for debauchery, for objectifying innocence... but before you finalize your verdict, oh innocent reader, I beg you to scan again that last stanza. What you and I overlooked in our cloud of perversion and nasty objectification was the unrestrained joy of a little girl playing dress-up for the very first time.” - Jake Vander Ark

71. “What’s so beautiful about girls?” I would implore.And the secret society of adults would reply with a smirk and wink as if I was merely a boy who couldn’t possibly have the mental maturity to comprehend such grown-up concepts as love and bleeding vaginas; “You’ll understand someday, James.” - Jake Vander Ark

72. “It’s not easy to be God.” - Péter Zilahy

73. “Every time I think about that girl, my mind commits a sin.” - Jake Vander Ark

74. “Plus, once he did the requisite double-take and recognized me, he’d probably beat the crap out of any guy who looked at me in all my Snow White meets Frederick’s of Hollywood glory.” - Katja Millay

75. “When left unsatisfied, lust becomes violence.” - Jake Vander Ark

76. “So the first step out of childhood is made all at once, without looking before or behind, without caution, and nothing held in reserve.” - Ursula K. Le Guin

77. “Who is old enough to ask, is old enough to know.” - Sharon Lee

78. “Me? I had no dreams. No longings. Dreams only set you up for disappointment. Plus, you had to have a life to have dreams of a better life.” - Julie Anne Peters

79. “…girls were like poems: weird, incomprehensible and boring, but those “in the know” assured me that they were beautiful.” - Jake Vander Ark

80. “She smoothes the front of the dress, looking down at her hands, at her bitten fingernails, at her big feet in the pointy-toes shoes. This is a woman's dress, she thinks, a young woman's dress. It is not a girl's dress. It is solidly on the other side of the line outside of girlhood. It is a dress that says something big in a very quiet way; it is a dress that is talking to Alice right now, a dress that is making her feel possibilities never before considered, the possibility of perfume and pretty and dancing and boys. This dress is who she might be, only more so.” - Laura Harrington

81. “He begins to sing to her, very softly, almost not singing at all, just a whisper of a tune. He spins out the tune like it is a tale he is telling her, until he feels her body relax, until he feels her falling into sleep. He sings to let her know he’s there, to stay anchored to the earth, to keep from laughing or crying in amazement that he is lying with Alice in his arms, he sings as if music could keep her alive, as if music could feed her soul, as if music could weave a protective spell around her to survive these days and these weeks and these months and these years, he sings as if he could give her a piece of himself, which will ring inside of her like a bell, like a promise, like hope whenever she needs him; and in his singing, he promises her every single thing he can think of, and more.” - Laura Harrington

82. “Why can't a girl just want to know stuff and not do stuff?” - Ellen Mulholland

83. “Sometimes, when you were thinking about something, trying to understand it, it opened up in your head without you expecting it to, like it was a soft spongy light unfolding, and you understood, it made sense forever…” - Roddy Doyle

84. “I was the ref. I was the ref they didn’t know about. Deaf and dumb. Invisible as a wall. I wanted no one to win” - Roddy Doyle

85. “But I don't know, in the end, what deserts, chasms, achievements, virtues, and beauties have to do with love. We can love for so many different, and paradoxical, qualities in the object of our love--for strength or for weakness, for beauty or for ugliness, for gaiety or for sadness, for sweetness or for bitterness, for goodness or for wickedness, for need or for impervious independence. Then, if we wonder from what secret springs in ourselves gushes our love, our poor brain goes giddy from speculation, and we wonder what is all meaning and worth. Is it our own need that makes us lean toward and wish to succor need, or is it our strength? What way would our strength, if we had it, incline our heart? Do we give love in order to receive love, and even in the transport or endearment carry the usurer's tight-lipped and secret calculation, unacknowledged even by ourselves? Or do we give with an arrogance after all, a passion for self-definition? Or do we simply want a hand, any hand, a human object, to clutch in the dark on the blanket, and fear lies behind everything? Do we want happiness, or is it pain, pain as the index of reality, that we, in the chamber of our heart, want?Oh, if I knew the answer, perhaps then I could feel free.” - Robert Penn Warren

86. “In my early teens, I heard about Naked Lunch and its mutating typewriters and talking cockroaches. While I would hardly classify its dystopic vision as erotica now, at the time, Naked Lunch was my first foray into consuming smut. It was because of Burroughs that I knew about the particular musk that blooms when a rectum is penetrated, and that death-by-hanging produces spontaneous trouser tents. The first Burroughs I read was Naked Lunch, but I buried myself in a few of his stories, and thus the arc of my recollection is just as non-linear as his narrative.” - Peter Dubé

87. “They drove back to her house in silence. Terrance pulled the car into the driveway and turned off the engine. Turning toward her, he said, “Khadejah, I really like you a lot and I don’t want to hurt you. But I’m not a virgin and I like to have sex. If we’re going to keep seeing each other, you’ve got to make a decision, because if I can’t get it from you I’ll get it from someone else.” He looked her straight in her tear-filled eyes. “I need to know whether to get a room for after the concert. Let me know tomorrow.” He reached over and opened her door. Khadejah didn’t say a word. She got out of the car and went into the house.Terrance sat there for a few minutes wondering if he was being fair. She had to know that he was having sex. Damn, I should feel honored that she’s still a virgin, he thought. Shit, I’ll just have my cake and eat it, too.Ten minutes later, Terrance was knocking on Adrienne’s door. “Hey, can I come in?” - Tracy L. Darity

88. “The river moves, but it follows a path. When it tires of one journey, it rubs through some rock to forge a new way. Hard work, but that's its nature.” - Kekla Magoon