Growing Up Absurd Quotes

“The Sexual plight of these children [those adolescents experimenting sexually] is officially not mentioned. The revolutionary attack on hypocrisy by Ibsen, Freud, Ellis, Dreiser, did not succeed this far. Is it an eccentric opinion that an important part of the kids' restiveness in school from the onset of puberty has to do with puberty? The teachers talk about it among themselves, all right. (In his school, Bertrand Russell thought it was better if they had sex, so they could give their undivided attention to mathematics, which was the main thing.) But since the objective factor does not exist in our schools, the school itself begins to be irrelevant. The question here is not whether sexuality should be discouraged or encouraged. That is an important issue, but far more important is that it is hard to grow up when existing facts are treated as though they do not exist. For then there is no dialogue, it is impossible to be taken seriously, to be understood, to make a bridge between oneself and society.

In American society we have perfected a remarkable form of censorship: to allow every one his political right to say what he believes, but to swamp his little boat with literally thousands of millions of newspapers, mass-circulation magazines, best-selling books, broadcasts, and public pronouncements that disregard what he says and give the official way of looking at things.”
― Paul Goodman

“They'd read comic books and crossed wooden swords and flipped baseball cards against the walls, while floors above people lay strapped to their beds for trying to gouge their own eyes out.”
― Tom Piccirilli, Hexes

“In junior high, we run a mile every week and we're supposed to get faster each time. Logically, there has to be a point when this is physically impossible, but Coach West doesn't seem to think so.”
― Lisa Moore Ramée, A Good Kind of Trouble