Rite Of Passage Quotes

“Fiction has been maligned for centuries as being "false," "untrue," yet good fiction provides more truth about the world, about life, and even about the reader, than can be found in non-fiction.”
― Clark Zlotchew

“Too many adults wish to 'protect' teenagers when they should be stimulating them to read of life as it is lived.”
― Margaret A. Edwards

“the juniors were acting different because they are now the seniors. They even had T-shirts made. I don't know who plans these things.”
― Stephen Chbosky, The Perks of Being a Wallflower

“When they reached their ship, Ed gazed out at the bay. It was black. The sky was black, but the bay was even blacker. It was a slick, oily blackness that glowed and reflected the moonlight like a black jewel. Ed saw the tiny specks of light around the edges of the bay where he knew ships must be docked, and at different points within the bay where vessels would be anchored. The lights were pale and sickly yellow when compared with the bright blue-white sparkle of the stars overhead, but the stars glinted hard as diamonds, cold as ice. Pg. 26.”
― Clark Zlotchew, Once upon a Decade: Tales of the Fifties

“I was ten when I heard the music that ended the first phase of my life and cast me hurtling towards a new horizon. Drenched to the skin, I stood on Dunoon’s pier peering seawards through diagonal rain, looking for the ferry that would take me home. There, on the everwet west coast of Scotland, I heard it: like sonic scalpels, the sounds of electric guitars sliced through the dreich weather. My body hairs pricked up like antennae. To my young ears these amplified guitars sounded angelic, for surely no man-made instrument could produce that tone. The singer couldn't be human. His voice was too clean, too pure, too resonant, as though a robot larynx were piping words through vocal chords of polished silver. The overall effect was intoxicating - a storm of drums, earthquake bass, razor-sharp guitar riffs, and soaring vocals of astonishing clarity. I knew that I was hearing the future.”
― Mark Rice, Metallic Dreams

“Teaching a boy to be a man is the primary job of a father.”
― Clayton Lessor MA, LPC

“When a boy feels as if no one cares about him, or as if he will never amount to anything, he truly believes it doesn’t matter what he does.”
― Clayton Lessor MA, LPC

“There’s a wound most troubled boys share, which, at its core, comes from the feeling that they don’t have their father’s unconditional love.”
― Clayton Lessor MA, LPC

“Despite what you might believe right now, your son’s future is bright. You only
need the right tools to help him get there.”
― Clayton Lessor MA, LPC

“I don’t know how I know about things. I just do, I just happen to know stuff about stuff. A cross for me to bear for sure, in particular when it comes to my mind-blowing talent for spotting evil. As talents go, looks like I drew a short straw yet again, because what’s the point in clocking a shitstorm charging at you at fifty million miles per hour, I mean it’s not like you come equipped with an umbrella that’s capable of withstanding such force. No such thing exists, unless the Japanese have invented it whilst I was busy looking the other way, namely towards this epic shitstorm that by the way keeps following me no matter where I go. Nothing I can do about that, except sit there, waiting to be hit.”
― Olga Bogdan, Igor: Wrong Place Wrong Time

“As a result of being propagated into a toxic way of life, the act of breaking from that life has been a rite of passage taken by those who wish to listen deep for their authentic self.”
― L.M. Browning, Drive Through the Night

“So it was a crossroads summer, when the universe seemed to stand perilously still like an egg wobbling on a precipice, a regular rite of passage summer that saw us traverse the hazardous divide between the illusions of boyhood and the far more pernicious deceptions of maturity, et cetera.”
― Sol Luckman, Beginner's Luke

“Evie shook her head in confusion, staring from her husband’s wrathful countenance to Gully’s carefully blank one. “I don’t understand—”
“Call it a rite of passage,” Sebastian snapped, and left her with long strides that quickly broke into a run.
Picking up her skirts, Evie hurried after him. Rite of passage? What did he mean? And why wasn’t Cam willing to do something about the brawl? Unable to match Sebastian’s reckless pace, she trailed behind, taking care not to trip over her skirts as she descended the flight of stairs. The noise grew louder as she approached a small crowd that had congregated around the coffee room, shouts and exclamations renting the air. She saw Sebastian strip off his coat and thrust it at someone, and then he was shouldering his way into the melee. In a small clearing, three milling figures swung their fists and clumsily attempted to push and shove one another while the onlookers roared with excitement.
Sebastian strategically attacked the man who seemed the most unsteady on his feet, spinning him around, jabbing and hooking with a few deft blows until the dazed fellow tottered forward and collapsed to the carpeted floor. The remaining pair turned in tandem and rushed at Sebastian, one of them attempting to pin his arms while the other came at him with churning fists.
Evie let out a cry of alarm, which somehow reached Sebastian’s ears through the thunder of the crowd. Distracted, he glanced in her direction, and he was instantly seized in a mauling clinch, with his neck caught in the vise of his opponent’s arm while his head was battered with heavy blows. “No,” Evie gasped, and started forward, only to be hauled back by a steely arm that clamped around her waist.
“Wait,” came a familiar voice in her ear. “Give him a chance.”
“Cam!” She twisted around wildly, her panicked gaze finding his exotic but familiar face with its elevated cheekbones and thick-lashed golden eyes. “They’ll hurt him,” she said, clutching at the lapels of his coat. “Go help him— Cam, you have to—”
“He’s already broken free,” Cam observed mildly, turning her around with inexorable hands. “Watch— he’s not doing badly.”
One of Sebastian’s opponents let loose with a mighty swing of his arm. Sebastian ducked and came back with a swift jab.
“Cam, why the d-devil aren’t you doing anything to help him?”
“I can’t.”
“Yes, you can! You’re used to fighting, far more than he—”
“He has to,” Cam said, his voice quiet and firm in her ear. “He’ll have no authority here otherwise. The men who work at the club have a notion of leadership that requires action as well as words. St. Vincent can’t ask them to do anything that he wouldn’t be willing to do himself. And he knows that. Otherwise he wouldn’t be doing this right now.”
Evie covered her eyes as one opponent endeavored to close in on her husband from behind while the other engaged him with a flurry of blows. “They’ll be loyal to him only if he is w-willing to use his fists in a pointless display of brute force?”
“Basically, yes.”
― Lisa Kleypas, Devil in Winter

“Healing, it turns out, is a journey. It doesn’t happen all at once.”
― Clayton Lessor MA, LPC

“According to most studies on the subject, boys who grow up without fathers grow up at a disadvantage.”
― Clayton Lessor MA, LPC

“Motherwhelm isn’t a problem, it’s a rite of passage. Once we recognize it as such and honor these intense times (and intense seasons of our lives) for the potential they have to help us get clear on what we want and what no longer serves us, we can use that intensity to our advantage. We can learn to direct our energy toward choices that create the connections, experiences, and ways of life we most deeply desire. We can learn to cultivate healthier, kinder relationships with ourselves and, in doing so, model healing and health and empowerment for generations to come.”
― Beth Berry, Motherwhelmed

“Imagine a life where threats are minimal and your fear is contained to not dominate your daily experiences in the world. You can have that. You deserve that. And in order to experience that, we have to venture into what might feel like a hostile terrain of rocky
challenges. We are venturing into your chaotic, muddled and beautiful life. The messy and chaotic parts. May you begin with your head held high.”
― Samantha Lourie, The Power of Mess: A guide to finding joy and resilience when life feels chaotic

“It’s time to stop dreaming about who you want your son to be and help him become the healthy, happy, and successful man he’s supposed to be.”
― Clayton Lessor MA, LPC

“Healthy boys grow into healthy men.”
― Clayton Lessor MA, LPC

“Round a corner, turn a page, get born again, leave one class for the next, trade-in one school for another; take one more step toward maturity. You won’t miss your past all that much.”
― J. Earp

“She stops, stares deep into my eyes. I wonder if this is where I kiss her, because that is how the story goes, right: first we stare at each other’s eyes, then we kiss, then we marry, than we have kids and then we die, unless we were dead all along, in which case no grand finale for us, oh no. Iva flicks my left brow. Ouch. Don’t suppose I ought to marry a flicker.”
― Olga Bogdan, Helena: The Small Town Throwdown

“The parents have all been posting up a storm, of course. At one point the previous day we'd all compared embarrassing "Can you believe she's looking at colleges?/tearful emoji" posts, to which all their friends added shocked faces and commented on the passage of time, yawn. Some of them went for the comparison post (Here's a picture of little Wanda in her Dorothy costume at four, here she is at sixteen; Oh my god I feel so old because this rite of passage is about me, not the one actually passaging) ...”
― Abbi Waxman, I Was Told It Would Get Easier

“Every holy passage leaves a scar.”
― Betsy James, Listening at the Gate

“Terrorist training camps effectively employ fear, violence, and pain in rituals reminiscent of costly adolescent rites of passage.”
― Candace Alcorta, Evolutionary Perspectives on Religion and Violence

“The Manhandling of Gilbert Gripes by Stewart Stafford

Scrummage in a birch wood,
Pyrrhic rut for an oval prize,
Grinning studs rake my face,
A flayed Garryowen as sport.

Cauliflower ears throb with fear,
Thunderous hooves charging,
Poleaxed by a car crash tackle,
Nosebleed kiss tickles my lips.

The rite of passage staggers on,
A butcher's initiation of brothers,
Cutthroat razors kindly supplied,
Wealthy primates whoop in safety.

© Stewart Stafford, 2024. All rights reserved.”
― Stewart Stafford