If we as a nation are to break the cycle of poverty, crime and the growing underclass of young people ill equipped to be productive citizens, we need to not only implement effective programs to prevent teen pregnancy, but we must also help those who have already given birth so that they become effective, nurturing, bonding parents.

The youth need to be enabled to become job generators from job seekers.

So many people try to grow up too fast, and it’s not fun! You should stay a kid as long as possible!

When I was growing up, my parents told me, ‘Finish your dinner. People in China and India are starving.’ I tell my daughters, ‘Finish your homework. People in India and China are starving for your job.’

Youth comes but once in a lifetime.

We must tell girls their voices are important.

We never really grow up, we only learn how to act in public.

Adolescence is the conjugator of childhood and adulthood.

My teenage years were exactly what they were supposed to be. Everybody has their own path. It’s laid out for you. It’s just up to you to walk it.

Adolescence isn’t just about prom or wearing sparkly dresses.

Adolescents are not monsters. They are just people trying to learn how to make it among the adults in the world, who are probably not so sure themselves.

Adolescence is a new birth, for the higher and more completely human traits are now born.

Adolescence is just one big walking pimple.

There was a three-year chunk as a teen where I should have been tranquilized and put in a cage.

Guilty pleasure implies that it’s something that I feel guilty for watching… people tell me I should feel guilty for watching because I’m too old to watch it, but I don’t give a damn: I love everything on Cartoon Network from ‘Adventure Time’ to ‘The Adventures of Gumball’, ‘Teen Titans’… all those shows that are for my kids, I like those!

To an adolescent, there is nothing in the world more embarrassing than a parent.

Trouble is, kids feel they have to shock their elders and each generation grows up into something harder to shock.

When I started out as a music journalist, at the end of the 1980s, it was generally assumed that we were living through the lamest music era the world would ever see. But those were also the years when hip-hop exploded, beatbox disco soared, indie rock took off, and new wave invented a language of teen angst.

Maturity is only a short break in adolescence.

In the Top 40, half the songs are secret messages to the teen world to drop out, turn on, and groove with the chemicals and light shows at discotheques.