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It Happens To Many Teenagers-that Moment When You Feel Full Of Resentment Or Distrust For Those Adults You Once Loved Unquestioningly.
-John Irving
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It Happens To Many

John Irving
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It Happens To Many Teenagers-that Moment When You Feel Full Of Resentment Or Distrust For Those Adults You Once Loved Unquestioningly.

Understanding the Quote: "it happens to many teenagers-that moment when you feel full of resentment..."

This quote by John Irving reflects deeply on the theme of teenager. It connects to the universal human journey of purpose, motivation, and reflection. Often categorized under Teenager, Adults, Resentment, the quote offers insight, emotional clarity, and intellectual inspiration to readers worldwide.

Whether you’re a student exploring new ideas, a leader trying to motivate your team, or someone seeking direction in life — this quote provides value. It resonates because it’s more than words — it’s a bridge between experience and wisdom. It shows how John Irving interprets life's core challenges and triumphs.

Lessons From the Quote

This quote teaches resilience and focus. It reminds readers that no matter where they stand in life, reflection and self-awareness lead to growth. Each word has meaning, and when studied, it becomes clear how impactful thoughtful language can be.

About John Irving

John Irving is celebrated for insightful thoughts on teenager and adults. Their legacy lives on through writings that guide, comfort, and inspire. Discover more on their profile page.

Actionable Takeaways

  • Reflect on how this quote applies to your current life path.
  • Share the message with someone who needs inspiration.
  • Write your thoughts on this quote in a journal or blog post.
  • Use it as a daily affirmation or reminder.

Closing Thoughts

Quotes like this endure because they capture universal truths. They comfort us in solitude and empower us in groups. Carry this quote forward — live by its wisdom, share its message, and keep its essence alive.

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Topic
Teenager
Adults
Resentment
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Finished
Ifs
It´s Natural To Want Someone You Love To Do What You Want, Or What You Think Would Be Good For Them, But You Have To Let Everything Happen To Them. You Can't Interfere With People You Love Any More Than You're Supposed To Interfere With People You Don't Even Know. And That's Hard, ..., Because You Often Feel Like Interfering -you Want To Be The One Who Makes The Plans.
Thinking
People
Would Be
I Certainly Think Obama Is The Most Hopeful President I've Seen In The Country Since John Kennedy.
Country
Thinking
Hopeful
I Have No Respect For The Right-to-life Position. But When You Legislate Personal Belief, You're In Violation Of Freedom Of Religion. The Catholic Church May Espouse Its Opinion On Abortion To The Members Of Its Congregation. But They Are In Violation Of Separation Of Church And State When They Try To Proselytize Their Abortion Politics On People Who Are Not Catholics.
People
Abortion
Catholic
I Think That Was When The Headmaster Realized He Had Lost; He Realized Then That He Was Finished. Because, What Could He Do? Was He Going To Tell Us To Stop Praying? We Kept Our Heads Bowed; And We Kept Praying. Even As Awkward As He Was, The Rev. Mr. Merrill Had Made It Clear To Us That There Was No End To Praying For Owen Meany.
Thinking
Awkward
Praying
…there Is No Nakedness That Compares To Being Naked In Front Of Someone For The First Time.
Naked
Firsts
First Time
I Don't Begin A Novel Until I Have Written, Not Just The Last Sentence, But Usually, As A Result Thereof, Many Of The Surrounding Final Paragraphs, So That In Addition To Knowing What Happens, I Know What The Voice Is.
Voice
Knowing
Finals
But I Often Think That So-called Glamorous People Are Just Very Busy People.
Thinking
People
Busy
Nothing Bears Out In Practice What It Promises Incipiently.
Practice
Promise
Bears
When Jack Burns Needed To Hold His Mother's Hand, His Fingers Could See In The Dark.
Mom
Mother
Dark
Just Because You're Sober, Don't Think You're A Good Driver, Cookie.
Thinking
Cookies
Sober
Lilly Was Not Crazy. She Left A Serious Suicide Note. 'sorry,' Said The Note. 'just Not Big Enough.
Suicide
Sorry
Crazy
A Writer's Job Is To Imagine Everything So Personally That The Fiction Is As Vivid As Memories.
Jobs
Memories
Writing
The Desire To Never Leave Your Side, The Desire To Never See You Again. The Desire To See Your Face Asleep On The Pillow Beside My Face And To See Your Eyes Open In The Morning When I Lie Next To You—just Watching You, Waiting For You To Wake Up.
Morning
Lying
Eye
Like Many Successful People He Made Good Use Of Disappointments - Responding To Them With Energy, With Near-frenzied Activity, Rather Than Needing To Recover From Them.
Disappointment
Successful
People
Writing A Novel Is Actually Searching For Victims. As I Write I Keep Looking For Casualties. The Stories Uncover The Casualties.
Writing
Stories
Victim
It Was A Sound Like Someone Trying Not To Make A Sound.
Trying
Sound
Self-hatred Is Worse Than Loneliness.
Loneliness
Self
Hatred
I Do Know Where I'm Going And It's Just A Matter Of Finding The Language To Get There.
Matter
Language
Findings
I Have A Friend Who Says That Reviewers Are The Tickbirds Of The Literary Rhinoceros-but He Is Being Kind. Tickbirds Perform A Valuable Service To The Rhino And The Rhino Hardly Notices The Birds.
Rhinos
Bird
Be Kind
I Have Stood Aside To See The Phantoms Of Those Days Go By Me. They Are Gone, And I Resume The Journey Of My Story.’ (david Copperfield) “but All That Night He Lay Awake Because The Phantoms Of Those Days Were Not Gone. Like The Tiny, Terrible Holes In The Prophylactics, The Phantoms Of Those Days Were Not Easy To Detect—and Their Meaning Was Unknown—but They Were There.
Night
Journey
Gone
When However Small A Measure Of Jealousy Is Mixed With Misunderstanding, There Is Always Going To Be Trouble.
Trouble
Misunderstanding
It Is An Important Distinction To Note That She Looked Not Only As If She Had Taken Good Care Of Herself, But That She Had Good Reason To Have Done So. (...) She Looked To Be In Such Total Possession Of Her Life That Only The Most Confident Men Could Continue To Look At Her If She Looked Back At Them. Even In Bus Stations, She Was A Woman Who Was Stared At Only Until She Looked Back.
Taken
Men
Important
What Is Hardest To Accept About The Passage Of Time Is That The People Who Once Mattered The Most To Us Wind Up In Parentheses.
Love
Wind
People
What Do Americans Know About Morality? They Don't Want Their Presidents To Have Penises But They Don't Mind If Their Presidents Covertly Arrange To Support The Nicaraguan Rebel Forces After Congress Has Restricted Such Aid; They Don't Want Their Presidents To Deceive Their Wives But They Don't Mind If Their Presidents Deceive Congress- Lie To The People And Violate The People's Constitution!
Lying
People
Wife
So We Dream On. Thus We Invent Our Lives. We Give Ourselves A Sainted Mother, We Make Our Father A Hero; And Someone’s Older Brother And Someone’s Older Sister – They Become Our Heroes Too. We Invent What We Love And What We Fear. There Is Always A Brave Lost Brother – And A Little Lost Sister, Too. We Dream On And On: The Best Hotel, The Perfect Family, The Resort Life. And Our Dreams Escape Us Almost As Vividly As We Can Imagine Them.
Mother
Dream
Brother
Never Confuse Faith, Or Belief — Of Any Kind — With Something Even Remotely Intellectual.
Intellectual
Belief
Kind
Children Are Most Impressed With The Importance Of A Moment When They Witness A Parent Breaking The Parents' Own Rule.
Children
Parent
Moments
For Most Of My Life, When I've Finished The Book I'm Writing, There've Always Been As Many As Two Or Three Other Novels Waiting To Be Written Next. And The Decision Driving Which One Of Them It Should Be Was Never Based On How Long It Had Waited Or How Many Accumulated Pages Of Notes I Had.
Book
Writing
Two
I Try To See The Whole Woman,' Eddie Said To Hannah. 'of Course I Recognize That She's Old, But There Are Photographs - Or The Equivalent Of Photographs In One's Imagination Of Anyone's Life. A Whole Life, I Mean. I Can Picture Her When She Was Much Younger Than I Am - Because There Are Always Gestures And Expressions That Are Ingrained, Ageless. An Old Woman Doesn't See Herself As An Old Woman, And Neither Do I. I Try To See Her Her Whole Life In Her. There's Something So Moving About Someone's Whole Life.
Moving
Mean
Expression
I Have Always Believed That, In A Story, If Something Traumatic Or Calamitous Enough Happens To A Kid At A Formative Age, That Will Make Him Or Her The Adult They Become.
Kids
Age
Adults
The Book Works Better If I Know Everything I Can About The Ending. Not Just What Happens, But How It Happens And What The Language Is; Not Just The Last Sentence, But Enough Of The Sentences Surrounding That Last Sentence To Know What The Tone Of Voice Is. I Imagined It As Something Almost Musical. Then You Are Writing Toward Something; You Know The Sound Of Your Voice At The End Of The Story. That's How You Want To Sound In Those Final Sentences: The Degree That It Is Uplifting Or Not, The Degree That It Is Melancholic Or Not.
Uplifting
Book
Writing
I Want To Go On Being A Student," I Told Him. "i Want To Be A Teacher. I'm Just A Reader," I Said. "don't Sound So Ashamed," He Said. "reading Is A Gift." "i Learned It From You," I Told Him. "it Doesn't Matter Where You Learned It- It's A Gift. If You Care About Something, You Have To Protect It. If You're Lucky Enough To Find A Way Of Life You Love, You Have To Find The Courage To Live It.
Teacher
Love You
Reading
Dan Suggested To Owen And Me That We Were Better Off To Not Involve Ourselves With Hester. How True! But How We Wanted To Be Involved In The Thrilling Real-life Sleaziness That We Suspected Hester Was In The Thick-of. We Were In A Phase, Through Television And The Movies, Of Living Only Vicariously. Even Faintly Sordid Silliness Excited Us If It Put Us In Contact With Love.
Real
Television
Phases
Know The Story Before You Fall In Love With Your First Sentence. If You Don’t Know The Story Before You Begin The Story, What Kind Of A Storyteller Are You? Just An Ordinary Kind, Just A Mediocre Kind – Making It Up As You Go Along, Like A Common Liar.
Falling In Love
Liars
Ordinary
People Regard Art Too Highly, And History Not Enough
Art
People
Enough
If You Don't Feel That You Are Possibly On The Edge Of Humiliating Yourself, Of Losing Control Of The Whole Thing, Then Probably What You Are Doing Isn't Very Vital.
Losing Control
Feels
Humiliating
Human Sexuality Makes Farcical Our Most Serious Intentions.
Serious
Intention
Sexuality
All I Say Is: Let Us Leave Les Folles Alone; Let's Just Leave Them Be. Don't Judge Them. You Are Not Superior To Them - Don't Put Them Down.
Judging
Tolerance
Superiors
There Are Few Things As Seemingly Untouched By The Real World As A Child Asleep.
Children
Real
World
Because Who Can Describe That Look That Triggers The Memory Of Loved Ones? Who Can Anticipate The Frown, The Smile, Or The Misplaced Lock Of Hair That Sends A Swift, Undeniable Signal From The Past? Who Can Ever Estimate The Power Of Association, Which Is Always Strongest In Moments Of Love And In Memories Of Death?
Memories
Past
Hair
Ever Since The Christmas Of 1953, I Have Felt That The Yuletide Is A Special Hell For Those Families Who Have Suffered Any Loss Or Who Must Admit To Any Imperfection; The So-called Spirit Of Giving Can Be As Greedy As Receiving-christmas Is Our Time To Be Aware Of What We Lack, Of Who's Not Home.
Christmas
Home
Loss
You Can't Say You're Going To Ban Something In The Name Of Good Taste, Because Then You Have Directed Someone To Play The Role Of Good-taste Police. We - Americans - Permit Bad Taste In This Country. In Fact, We Even Encourage It.
Country
Play
Names
Newspapers Are Even Worse For Me Than Ice Cream; Headlines, And The Big Issues That Generate The Headlines, Are Pure Fat.
Ice Cream
Issues
Newspapers
Good Habits Are Worth Being Fanatical About.
Generosity
Habit
Good Habits
In The World According To Her Father, Jenny Garp Knew, We Must Have Energy. Her Famous Grandmother, Jenny Fields, Once Thought Of Us As Externals, Vital Organs, Absentees, And Goners. But In The World According To Garp, We Are All Terminal Cases.
Father
Grandmother
Energy
I'm Not At All Contemporary, Not Even Modern, And The Fact That I Would Be So Quaintly Attracted To That Wrestling Rule Makes Me, I Suppose, Seem All The More Old-fashioned. I Believe In Rules Of Behavior, And I'm Quite Interested In Stories About The Consequences Of Breaking Those Rules.
Believe
Wrestling
Would Be
Among Adults – And Among Orphans – Wilbur Larch Noted That Delirious Happiness Was Rare.
Adults
Orphan
Delirious
It Was One Of Those Ridiculous Arrangements That Couples Make When They Are Separating, But Before They Are Divorced - When They Still Imagine That Children And Property Can Be Shared With More Magnanimity Than Recrimination.
Children
Couple
Divorce
It Happens To Many Teenagers-that Moment When You Feel Full Of Resentment Or Distrust For Those Adults You Once Loved Unquestioningly.
Teenager
Adults
Resentment
This Was Not Of The Nature Of A Christlike Lesson For Owen Meany To Learn, As He Lay In The Manger, That Someone You Hate Can Give You A Hard-on.
Hate
Giving
Lessons
Wherever The Tv Glows, There Sits Someone Who Isn't Reading.
Reading
Tvs
When I Feel Like Being A Director, I Write A Novel.
Writing
Directors
Novel
A Truly Happy Woman Drives Some Men And Almost Every Other Woman Absolutely Crazy
Crazy
Men
Happy Woman
I Am Compulsive About Writing, I Need To Do It The Way I Need Sleep And Exercise And Food And Sex; I Can Go Without It For A While, But Then I Need It.
Sex
Writing
Sleep
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