Adolescence is the conjugator of childhood and adulthood.

In every adult human there still lives a helpless child who is afraid of aloneness.... This would be so even if there were a possibility for perfect babies and perfect mothers.

Adolescence is the conjugator of childhood and adulthood.

Adolescence represents an inner emotional upheaval, a struggle between the eternal human wish to cling to the past and the equally powerful wish to get on with the future.

The most significant change wrought by adolescence is the taming of the ideals by which a person measures himself. . . . Love of oneself becomes love of the species. Conscience is pointed to the future, whispering permission to reach beyond the safety net of our ordinary and finite human existence.

We humans undergo two major growth spurts: one during infancy and another from eleven to twelve until fifteen or sixteen--pubescence. Between the two is a relatively quiescent growth period in which most of the body takes a rest from growing while the brain continues to mature. This period of life is general referred to as childhood or, sometimes, latency.

Adolescence is a time of active deconstruction, construction, reconstruction--a period in which past, present, and future are rewoven and strung together on the threads of fantasies and wishes that do not necessarily follow the laws of linear chronology.