What is this thing you call substance abuse? All I wanna do is forget and get loose.Drinking and smoking over and overWhat’s so great about a life that’s sober?There’s nothing cool about being youngWhen the...

If you skip one class, everyone knows about it. The teacher will track you down, or one of the guidance counselors will track you down and ask if you’re smoking pot. According to the geniuses...

Halfway through the set, the lead singer, who goes by Cloud, knife in hand, begins to stab at the cutout of Copal Brandt with a lion’s passion. Out of nowhere blood is produced and Cloud...

I tried to hate you, to forgive you, all just to forget you, but I’m only capable of loving you. You’re tattooed onto my skin, and the more I try to erase you, the deeper...

I rubbed at my temple, where the zit was gone. It still hurt a little , though, deep under the skin. I hate those zits that burrow underground. You think they’ve vanished, but no, they...

Directing teenage actors is like juggling jars of nitro-glycerine: exhilarating and dangerous.

As much as I think about sex, I can only with extreme difficulty conceive of myself actually performing the act. And here’s another thing I wonder about. How could you ever look a girl in...

pencils racing across paper, a sound I like.” Marisol

She looked over the colored boxes of smiling women holding plastic sticks. Why isn’t there a box showing a terrified teen?

I knew it was a terrible idea. We were supposed to be leaving our past behind us, not fully embracing it. But she was a part of my past that I wanted to hold onto....

I thought you were just typical teenagers.”No one has ever called me typical. I can’t say I like it.

From the time they hit middle school, they start moving away from home. They are not doing anything wrong; it’s just the way they are made. They are becoming independent, and they begin redefining themselves...

If you can imagine it you can surely create it

Many parents have experienced the fact that kids don’t seem to honor their parents the way that previous generations of children did. The question we need to ask is, how did we get to this...

See?” I crowed. “I know what I’m doing. Two weeks, tops, and you’ll be begging to dip your fries in my shake.””You think?” It took me about a second before I realized I’d done it...

I reached for his other hand, which he quickly accepted and I pulled him up into a hug. I didn’t know what the other kids in the room were thinking or saying or doing. And...

Your passions don’t have to connect to one another and no one needs to sign off on them. Passion isn’t logical… it’s only the fuel which keeps our souls alive. Let it be that simple.

Take it from me, anyone who lives with you is occasionally going to wonder who your liver might taste, and not because they are hungry. It comes with being a teenager – you inspire violence...

She could ask for anything, she thought dizzily, anything–an end to pain or world hunger or disease, or for peace on earth. But then again, perhaps these things weren’t in the power of angels to...

In winter this town is freezing. You step out your door in the morning and the whole place looks like one of those nature specials in which a guy brings a camcorder to the North...

Books didn’t make me wallow in darkness, darkness made me wallow in books.

You two are bound to one another. You always have been … and you can’t run away from what you are. No matter where you go, your feelings for her are going to follow you.

a young man is still a boy, and a boy sometimes has the right to be stubborn.

Whuppins were like kid taxes we paid with our behinds.

Consider, if you will, the morning boner. What a metaphor of hope and renewal! How can anyone give way to despair when one’s groin greets each day with such a gala spectacle of physical optimism?

For the love of God, unless you’re prepping for Rigoletto at the Met, go easy on the eyeliner.

The warmth and the passion in my veins are more than enough for a hundred thirsty girls.

Each time that I have felt like I might finally be figuring some things out, life has decided to change the rules and I’ve had to start all over again.

Change is a contact sport.

Sometimes I wonder about good and evil. If the villain wins, isn’t he heralded as the hero? I’ve tried so hard to be good since that day, but sometimes I wonder whether it’s even worth...

I became a nightangle in the darkness ❤ ❤

He wishes he could remember everything. Anything. He doesn’t sense a bone in his body that can feel compassion or worthiness. Self-pity hides away as well, the lowest form of emotion not even capable of...

Education is the master key to greatness; without it, a child would be faced with the darkness of a future that’s full of uncertainties.

After that, I’d wanted to date, but I simply didn’t know how. It seemed to come natural to everyone else, pairing up and going out. And now, well, I felt like a nonparticipant, like there...

Although many things may still need to happen before you identify what your exact work will be, I know that every single person whom you’re meeting and every experience that you’re having is necessary to...

The children now love luxury. They have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise.

Everything that happens to you matters to me.

We are going to change the way young people think about fitness.

I wanted to know what it was like to be a drug addict, and have an eating disorder, and have a loved one die, and fall in love. I saw my friends going through these...

Matteo lived inside her like a memory that paradoxically stopped the pain and which she could never get enough of… because there was, and never would be, anything that was like him. Wherever she went,...

It was the flashing lights, and the noise of the machines, and the loud, loud music, all seeming to refract and contract around her, her eyes widening, her hair swooshing, her slow smile shining. She...

Then turn your eyes back on me,and tell me that Cathy and I are still children to be treated with condescension, and are incapable of understanding adult subjects.

How embarrassing that she ever did something that silly. But, good God, she was seventeen. At that age, we’re mostly high-pitched and crazy. All urgent chemicals raging around the blood course. And that’s why we...

One warm morning in July, a ghost came to our breakfast table.

I failed angst in high school. They let me graduate anyway.

Hope, in anything but myself, is just way too dangerous right now…

These problems are real, and you can’t turn off real life. So I won’t try. Instead, I’ll give you a set of tools to help you deal with real life.

I was just stock in the middle, vague and undefined.

Some people were simply created with the right genes and the proper social skills, I figured. They ended up at a lunch table with a group of good-looking individuals, like them, who did what all...

The butterflies swirl again in Sera’s stomach. Perhaps they have brought along fireflies too, to light up her soul.