Millennial Authors Quotes

“Millennials: We lost the genetic lottery. We graduated high school into terrorist attacks and wars. We graduated college into a recession and mounds of debt. We will never acquire the financial cushion, employment stability, and material possessions of our parents. We are often more educated, experienced, informed, and digitally fluent than prior generations, yet are constantly haunted by the trauma of coming of age during the detonation of the societal structure we were born into. But perhaps we are overlooking the silver lining. We will have less money to buy the material possessions that entrap us. We will have more compassion and empathy because our struggles have taught us that even the most privileged can fall from grace. We will have the courage to pursue our dreams because we have absolutely nothing to lose. We will experience the world through backpacking, couch surfing, and carrying on interesting conversations with adventurers in hostels because our bank accounts can't supply the Americanized resorts. Our hardships will obligate us to develop spiritual and intellectual substance. Maybe having roommates and buying our clothes at thrift stores isn't so horrible as long as we are making a point to pursue genuine happiness.”
― Maggie Young

“Dear millennials: Youth is fleeting. Stupid is forever.”
― Oliver Markus Malloy, Inside The Mind of an Introvert: Comics, Deep Thoughts and Quotable Quotes

“I became a feminist upon the realization that, whether physical, mental, or emotional, everything involved in obtaining love and approval from men required some form of self-mutilation.”
― Maggie Young

“In my early twenties, I treated sex like a bartering system, trading giving for receiving, feeling victorious when I’d received more pleasure, and swindled when I’d given more. As I matured, sex became a bond that was only gratifying when both parties were equally satisfied.”
― Maggie Young

“I’ve always had a very binge and then cleanse approach to casual sex for that very reason. We long for an intimate connection, but that longing makes us feel vulnerable. Therefore, we guard our hearts for self-preservation, which barricades that intimacy we are longing for.”
― Maggie Young

“The deeper into this chapter in my life I get, the fainter the hum of crucifixion becomes.”
― Maggie Young

“I use the present tense, but I mean, that’s the way I remember it, and these are the things I learned about it, later, and the two combined have formed my truth of a place. We all have our truth of a place. There is no universal narrative of any city that is also real. Only marketing.”
― Sarah Thankam Mathews, All This Could Be Different

“This is my tragedy and my great good fortune, to be the recipient of this bond, to be kept alive under its crushing warmth and weight, to be given it so freely, so much more than I have ever deserved.”
― Sarah Thankam Mathews, All This Could Be Different

“The world has ended a thousand times and my name called in each new book of it.”
― Sarah Thankam Mathews, All This Could Be Different

“Granny flats are misnamed. They were once intended for older relatives, so they can live near their adult children and grandchildren. Hence the appellation. Down in the lowlands of Boomertown, there are many such little residences. But they’re not for grannies.

Instead, the buildings should be called ‘children and grandchildren emergency shelters’ because that’s what they’ve become. Whole families cram themselves into a few dozen square metres of space and meanwhile, the grandparents stay in the big main house, rattling around their many empty rooms like rubber balls in a vast squash court.”
― I.M. Millennial, A Year in Boomertown: A Memoir

“You can't exploit a woman who has based her entire career on exploiting herself.”
― Maggie Young

“All I could hear in these stories about shitty people treating each other in shitty ways was an empty nihilism. Tear it down by all means, but then surely you had to build it back up? So many stories were Irvine Welsh rip-offs. He might've told us we could 'Choose Life'- and that meant consumerism, the other option being drugs. But beyond that binary there had to be something more- people wanting to heal, wanting to create something positive?”
― Guy Mankowski, You Complete the Masterpiece: A Novel

“So, when can your mother expect another grandchild?’ Mrs Dankworth utters, just as the tea is being poured.
I stare at Mrs Dankworth, well aware that my mother’s eyes are on me. I consider a comeback, but respond with a lame, ‘I guess time will tell, Mrs Dankworth. It will depend on what happens in life and what Bailey and I want to do.’
It isn’t the answer I want to give. I want to tell Mrs Dankworth to take a short walk off a long pier, to swim with a pod of sharks, to have a stroke, to be eaten by her five cats. But I’m conditioned to be polite to a generation of people that can demand any information from me they want without consequence.”
― I.M. Millennial, A Year in Boomertown: A Memoir

“After decades of shaping of the world, the Boomers are finally facing their end. It’s something we all must deal with one day. But when you’ve experienced power your whole life, the end of one’s life is the ultimate moment of being powerless in the face of something you can’t change.
And they hate the very thought of it.”
― I.M. Millennial

“In between one heartbeat and the next, I know my time in Boomertown is at an end.
And not even for my sake or Bailey’s, but for Ace’s. I came, I saw, and unlike Caesar, I did not conquer. But then, I never could have done that, anyway.
I think that’s the real secret to the Boomer generation.
They gave us a rigged game from the start. Gen X, Millennials and Zoomers played against the house. We were told we could win if we just worked hard enough, but most of us have lost out in some way or another.”
― I.M. Millennial

“Many of my parents’ friends own more than one house, sometimes so many that whole dwellings sit unused and empty for years. And so it’s an odd contradiction that they often seem to get stuck on the most minute details when it comes to renovations. My hypothesis is that this is a way to feel the thrill of ownership come to life again. It’s polishing the already gilded lily.”
― I.M. Millennial, A Year in Boomertown: A Memoir

“I’ve found environmentalism isn’t popular with many Boomers unless it gives them good social value; a round of applause for recycling or for purchasing themselves the latest state-of-the-art electric car. They were born amid one of the largest eras of value-by-resource-extraction, and they’re just not wired to understand scarcity.”
― I.M. Millennial, A Year in Boomertown: A Memoir

“The house is in moderate condition, but when we do the usual dance of exploring the price range, the agent clarifies that the owner has high expectations.
The owner interjects and I hear the full story from the man himself. ‘My house has been valued at a million,’ he says with a grin. ‘Though I’ve been told it might be worth more than that. Would you believe it only cost me a year’s income back in the eighties? Had three children and never had to worry about money or a place to live. And now the value of it just keeps going up! It’s unbelievable what people have to pay for houses these days. Never would have imagined it.’ He cackles at this, as if it’s the funniest thing in the world.”
― I.M. Millennial, A Year in Boomertown: A Memoir

“I’m her grandmother!’ my mother repeats, now shouting. ‘I have rights. I get a say in how she lives her life!’
That’s what it comes down to, doesn’t it?
Rights.
Who has the right to dictate to family, friends and the world about how people should live, how things should work and what life means?
Boomers have expressed these rights for decades. And they’ve refused to cede authority and autonomy to the generations that follow. Even the Trailers live in the Boomers’ shadow.”
― I.M. Millennial, A Year in Boomertown: A Memoir

“Kindness has no price. It isn’t for sale but comprises the tens, hundreds and even thousands of ways we relate to people. It’s a lesson that I don’t feel most Boomers have ever understood. For them, everything in the world has a price tag. But then, that’s what they’ve learned from their time and place in the world. Anyone and anything can be bought.”
― I.M. Millennial, A Year in Boomertown: A Memoir

“But that’s what it’s like being a Millennial in a Boomer’s world. There’s always someone else pulling the strings.”
― I.M. Millennial, A Year in Boomertown: A Memoir

“In general, Boomers, as a generation, have sowed their crop and they must reap what they’ve planted. They are and will be admired, feared and reviled in mixed measure. They made everything about themselves, and subjugated both their parents before them, and everyone who followed them, in equal measure.”
― I.M. Millennial, A Year in Boomertown: A Memoir