Wasted Youth Quotes

“I never got to see a proper striptease. Not anything even remotely close. I was stupid and went to literary cafés and spent my time on artistic nonsense instead. Now it is too late. I am old and blind. I must content myself with hearing the garments fall. I dictated this.”
― Tor Ulven, Stein og speil: mixtum compositum

“I am tired
of undressing to no comment,
years and years of youth
wasted to the particles in the air.”
― Analicia Sotelo, Virgin

“with his words
in my head
I slept for thirty
or forty forevers
while the grass shrieked
and the trees tremored
it was crazy
letting my youth
pass like that
giving myself up
to the abstract fears
balconies collapsing
over the east river
as far as the eye could see
until all is miniature
wind over water
without end
when I am dead
I will have something
to say about death
& all the men stretched out
a girl must be a graveyard
I am a descendant of fields
and want to keep my mind off it, especially”
― Deborah Landau, The Last Usable Hour

“The bullet is followed by the silence of the grave, but a wasted youth is followed by years of grief and agonising memories.”
― Anton Chekhov

“Once upon a time I'd left Los Angeles and been swallowed down the throat of a life in which my sole loyalty was to my tongue. My belly. Myself. My mother called me selfish and so selfish I became. From nineteen to twenty-five I was a mouth, sating. For myself I made three-day braises and chose the most marbled meats, I played loose with butter and cream. My arteries were young, my life pooling before me, and I lapped, luxurious, from it. I drank, smoked, flew cheap red-eyes around Europe, I lived in thrilling shitholes, I found pills that made nights pass in a blink or expanded time to a soap bubble, floating, luminous, warm. Time seemed infinite, then. I begged famous chefs for the chance to learn from them. I entered competitions and placed in a few. I volunteered to work brunch, turn artichokes, clean the grease trap. I flung my body at all of it: the smoke and singe of the grill station, a duck's breast split open like a geode, two hundred oysters shucked in the walk-in, sex in the walk-in, drunken rides around Paris on a rickety motorcycle and no helmet, a white truffle I stole and shaved in secret over a bowl of Kraft mac n' cheese for me, just me, as my body strummed the high taut selfish song of youth. On my twenty-fifth birthday I served black-market fugu to my guests, the neurotoxin stinging sweetly on my lips as I waited to see if I would, by eating, die. At that age I believed I knew what death was: a thrill, like brushing by a friend who might become a lover.”
― C Pam Zhang, Land of Milk and Honey