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“FORKED BRANCHES


We grew up on the same street,
You and me.
We went to the same schools,
Rode the same bus,
Had the same friends,
And even shared spaghetti
With each other's families.


And though our roots belong to
The same tree,
Our branches have grown
In different directions.
Our tree,
Now resembles a thousand
Other trees
In a sea of a trillion
Other trees
With parallel destinies
And similar dreams.
You cannot envy the branch
That grows bigger
From the same seed,
And you cannot
Blame it on the sun's direction.
But you still compare us,
As if we're still those two
Kids at the park
Slurping down slushies and
Eating ice cream.



Suzy Kassem, Rise Up and Salute the Sun (2010)”
― Suzy Kassem, Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem

“Politics is clearly a not so happening topic in our young blood. I could clearly see many students yawning. Some might have been discussing the new Shakira video amongst themselves, the one shown on MTV these days. Bloody donkeys, if it was a porno movie featuring an interracial orgy, their eyes might have ogled out and ears might have become sensitive to the oohs and aahs but not for causes of the nation. Hrmpf …youth power indeed!”
― Faraaz Kazi

“Appeal with respect to elderly people as you would to the members of your own family.”
― Lailah Gifty Akita, Think Great: Be Great!

“Women not only bear the brunt of the equation of beauty with youth, we perpetuate it—every time we dye our hair to cover the gray or lie about our age, not to mention have plastic surgery to cover the signs of aging.”
― Ashton Applewhite, This Chair Rocks: A Manifesto Against Ageism

“Through most of human history, our ancestors had children shortly after puberty, just as the members of all nonhuman species do to this day. Whether we like the idea or not, our young ancestors must have been capable of providing for their offspring, defending their families from predators, cooperating with others, and in most other respects functioning fully as adults. If they couldn't function as adults, their young could not have survived, which would have meant the swift demise of the human race. The fact that we're still here suggests that most young people are probably far more capable than we think they are. Somewhere along the line, we lost sight of â€� and buried â€� the potential of our teens.”
― Robert Epstein

“Rag Tags, you see, are absolutely free to do as they please, which for the most part is to imitate each other. And you only have to take a closer look at most youth culture groups to verify that. Mods and rockers, skinheads and greasers, teddy boys, suadeheads, chavs, emos, goths etc. all fear that by being different they’ll be left out in the cold. That’s why they’re Rag Tags”
― Karl Wiggins, Wrong Planet - Searching for your Tribe

“It’s been suggested that Chavs are the offspring of previous working-class youth subcultures such as Skinheads and in turn Mods, but when you think about it, they’re not at all, are they? Chavs - with their larger bellies, hairless bodies and excessive sweat glands - are evolution in reverse, proof that given time Homo Sapiens can devolve into a more primitive life form. With Chavs, evolution has not only hesitated but is actually in withdrawal. Chavs may well be the ‘missing linkâ€� in the devolution of man into anthropoid.”
― Karl Wiggins, Wrong Planet - Searching for your Tribe

“There is not a single person I have met in my lifetime who is comfortable talking about death. It’s the biggest downside to our youth-centric culture. Death is a bummer, so let’s not talk about it. Let’s hide it away and hope it never strikes close to home.”
― Gudjon Bergmann, The Meditating Psychiatrist Who Tried to Kill Himself

“G. Stanley Hall, a creature of his times, believed strongly that adolescence was determined â€� a fixed feature of human development that could be explained and accounted for in scientific fashion. To make his case, he relied on Haeckel's faulty recapitulation idea, Lombroso's faulty phrenology-inspired theories of crime, a plethora of anecdotes and one-sided interpretations of data. Given the issues, theories, standards and data-handling methods of his day, he did a superb job. But when you take away the shoddy theories, put the anecdotes in their place, and look for alternate explanations of the data, the bronze statue tumbles hard.
I have no doubt that many of the street teens of Hall's time were suffering or insufferable, but it's a serious mistake to develop a timeless, universal theory of human nature around the peculiarities of the people of one's own time and place.”
― Robert Epstein, Teen 2.0: Saving Our Children and Families from the Torment of Adolescence

“They call it "young music"; I see, however, that the record industry makes millions by the carload for shrewd older people! They invoke the name of spontaneity, nonconformity and originality; actually, canny "clothing industrialists" manipulate the field, undisturbed sovereigns! They call themselves revolutionaries, but the overscrupulous attentions devoted to their hair and their dress risk creating merely effeminates.”
― Pope John Paul I, Illustrissimi: Letters from Pope John Paul I

“The mainstreaming of porn is tremendously affecting what’s expected of them. They’re learning sex through porn. What it means to have sex, a lot of the time, is to mimic what they see in pornography.â€�
(Donna Freitas quote from book)”
― Nancy Jo Sales, American Girls: Social Media and the Secret Lives of Teenagers

“People either fail in education or pass in education and fail in knowledge or pass in knowledge and fail in implementation. The one who crosses all these phases is successful.”
― Aiyaz Uddin, US Staffing Industry 2020

“Do not speak harshly to a grown-up man. He is old enough to be your father.”
― Lailah Gifty Akita, Think Great: Be Great!

“A blessed deed is saying hello with a smile to someone you meet on the street, in the shop, in the bus, in the office, in the church, in the holy places, in the mosque, at the park, at the school, at the universityâ€�..â€� This is the greatest action of belonging to one another.”
― Lailah Gifty Akita, Think Great: Be Great!

“That’s the problem, isn’t it? Our youth enamored society hides death from us, makes us believe that we will live forever," Jack asserted, rather forcefully. "We don’t want to see death. We even hide old people so that we don’t have to be reminded of our own mortality. In other cultures, old age is celebrated, embraced even. Death is a part of life.”
― Gudjon Bergmann, The Meditating Psychiatrist Who Tried to Kill Himself

“Watching Carrie Fisher on what seems to be her last work, the British sitcom " Catastrophe" playing a crazy old mom makes me wonder how many talents are taken for granted just because they have aged. Just to quote her again, as if "they are disobedient kids" treated with so little respect and honor. In a culture that venerates the youth and degenerates everything that is somewhat "out of date" we can only wonder how the future will be. If the same ones that diminishes the old will themselves be older too. If they are lucky enough to reach a certain age and age well.”
― Ana Claudia Antunes, The Tao of Physical and Spiritual

“If the educated youth remain indifferent to the problems of this world, the whole human civilization is bound to tarnish.”
― Abhijit Naskar, When Humans Unite: Making A World Without Borders

“If you make boozed up youngsters with no comprehension of civilization your role model, you will end up with a world outwardly sophisticated yet inwardly broken and empty. Remember, a singer who publicly practices eroticism on stage, is no more empowering than a dog who pees at the corner of the street.”
― Abhijit Naskar, When Call The People: My World My Responsibility

“If you make boozed up youngsters with no comprehension of civilization your role model, you will end up with a world outwardly sophisticated yet inwardly broken and empty.”
― Abhijit Naskar, When Call The People: My World My Responsibility

“The front ramp is gradually lowered, in slow electronic increments. A couple of dozen backpackers stand, inside the lower deck’s muted light, like an army of extraterrestrials. Paros is refilling with English, German, French, Italian, Scandinavian, Australian, and South African tourists. The town remains in motion. Some come. Some go. The cycle appears endless. The entire world appears to wash up on Paros.”
― Gary J. Floyd, Liberté: The Days of Rage 1990-2020

“It's people running around looking for anything to generate volume: Oh, teenage girls are taking their clothes off? And that's getting a lot of hits? Then let's turn a blind eye to the consequences. Oh, your daughter's on Tinder? Well, she's just meeting friends. It's all about high-volume usage. I don't think it's necessarily a cynical, let's destroy women thing - it's how can I get my next quarter's bonus?
And I think to the extent that the digital social media society normalizes impulses- think it, post it," Roberts says, "we've also created a context for more and more provocative propositions, whatever they are: Look at my boobs. Do you want to hook up? It's moved the bar for what's normal and normalized extreme behavior; everything outrageous becomes normalized so rapidly. You realize how insane things are today when you think about the relative rate of change. When I was in high school, if I had gone around saying, Here's a picture of me, like me, I would have gotten punched. If a girl went around passing out naked pictures of herself, people would have thought she needed therapy. Now that's just Selfie Sunday."

(--- Paul Roberts quoted from the book)”
― Nancy Jo Sales, American Girls: Social Media and the Secret Lives of Teenagers

“The more I talk to students," Freitas says, "the more the culture of hooking up seems really problematic for them. Both young women and young men are seriously unhappy with the way things are; they're really ambivalent about the sex they're having. According to everything they see in pop culture, they're supposed to be having a great time; but it's rare that I find a young man or a young woman who says hooking up is the best thing ever. In reality it seems to empty them out.”
― Nancy Jo Sales, American Girls: Social Media and the Secret Lives of Teenagers

“I also wish I knew why millions of bright American children turn overnight into teenage nerds. The substitution of the automobile for the natural body, which our culture has effected in the most evil perversion of humanity since chivalry, is one cause; narcosis by drugs and Dionysian music is another.”
― Guy Davenport, The Guy Davenport Reader

“Menopause isn't "Cocoon." Sorry.”
― Heather Corinna, What Fresh Hell Is This?: Perimenopause, Menopause, Other Indignities, and You

“In wiping out the anguish of society,
I forgot to indulge in the exploits of youth.
Once I realized the world on my shoulder,
That was the end of self, and the birth of truth.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Mucize Misafir Merhaba: The Peace Testament

“Ironically, for all that youth culture rejects classical music as old-fashioned and out-ofdate, it is the way it is because of an excess of rational thought; it is, literally, too modern. Instead, youth culture yearns for a prerational immediacy, that of the body, of libidinal energy, and for the luxury of blind, adolescent emotions without consequences or responsibilities. Ironic, too, is that popular culture presents a prerational consciousness as the absolutely modern.”
― Julian Johnson, Who Needs Classical Music?: Cultural Choice and Musical Value

“Youth is not what you think,
Youth is not a matter of numericity.
Youth is the celebration of life,
Youth is the spirit of discovery.
Youth is not about age,
Youth is but a spirit,
The spirit of unsubmission,
The spirit of selfless uplift.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Himalayan Sonneteer: 100 Sonnets of Unsubmission

“Youth is not a number, but a state of awareness.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Yarasistan: My Wounds, My Crown

“...det känns som att alla i vÃ¥r Ã¥lder bara vill prata om framtiden. Vad som händer efter skolan, vart alla ska resa, vad alla ska göra. Det är väldigt fÃ¥ som tar sig tid att lyssna pÃ¥ det som händer här och nu.”
― Callum Bloodworth, Berätta tre saker

“Maybe you feel as if there were nothing better in the world than driving in a car, listening to music with friends, looking for an all-night donut shop. Nobody says a thing, and it is perfect.”
― Hua Hsu, Stay True