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29 Quotes That Will Comfort And Guide You Through Your Quarter-Life Crisis

Because even your greatest role models didn't have it all figured out at 26.
Heidi Priebe
October 20, 2016
“Sometimes you have to live in precarious and temporary places. Unsuitable places. Wrong places. Sometimes the safe place won’t help you.”
— Jeanette Winterson, Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?
Tagged: ENFP, Change, Movement, Moving On, Places
“Sometimes the novel is not ready to be written because you haven’t met the inspiration for your main character yet. Sometimes you need two more years of life experience before you can make your masterpiece into something that will feel real and true and raw to other people. Sometimes you’re not falling in love because whatever you need to know about yourself is only knowable through solitude. Sometimes you haven’t met your next collaborator. Sometimes your sadness encircles you because, one day, it will be the opus upon which you build your life.”
— Jamie Varon, To Anyone Who Thinks They’re Falling Behind
Tagged: Change, Life, Timing, Falling Behind, Patience, Creativity, Passion, inspiration, ENFP
“You may do this, I tell you, it is permitted. 
Begin again the story of your life.”
— Jane Hirshfield, The Lives Of The Heart
Tagged: Life, Starting Over, Change, Personal Growth, New Beginning, Failure, Growth
“You live out the confusions until they become clear.”
— Anaïs Nin, The Diary Of Anais Nin
Tagged: Confusion, Life, Challenges, Change, Navigating Change, Uncertainty, Leaning Into Uncertainty
“When you’re in your 20s, you change. A lot. I know this sounds ridiculous, but like I’m 26 and whenever I meet someone who’s 22 or 23 — even if I love them — I’m just like, “Go back into the oven because you aren’t done yet.” Three years do make a major difference in your 20s because every year is like a giant epiphany.”
— Ryan O'Connell, 3 Reasons Why Being In A Relationship In Your 20s Is Hard
Tagged: Love, Relationships, Change, Growing Up, Falling In Love, Twenty-Something, Dating, Age Difference
“The useless days will add up to something. The shitty waitressing jobs. The hours writing in your journal. The long meandering walks. The hours reading poetry and story collections and novels and dead people’s diaries and wondering about sex and God and whether you should shave under your arms or not. These things are your becoming.”
— Cheryl Strayed, Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Love and Life from Dear Sugar
Tagged: Life
“I don’t think there’s a single dumbass thing I’ve done in my adult life that I didn’t know was a dumbass thing to do while I was doing it. Even when I justified it to myself—as I did every damn time—the truest part of me knew I was doing the wrong thing. Always.”
— Cheryl Strayed, Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Love and Life from Dear Sugar
Tagged: Doing The Right Thing, Right, Wrong, Responsibility, Intuition, Trusting Yourself, Trusting Your Gut
“Go, even though you love him.
Go, even though he is kind and faithful and dear to you.
Go, even though he's your best friend and you're his.
Go, even though you can't imagine your life without him.
Go, even though he adores you and your leaving will devastate him.
Go, even though your friends will be disappointed or surprised or pissed off or all three.
Go, even though you once said you would stay.
Go, even though you're afraid of being alone.
Go, even though you're sure no one will ever love you as well as he does.
Go, even though there is nowhere to go.
Go, even though you don't know exactly why you can't stay.
Go, because you want to.
Because wanting to leave is enough.”
— Cheryl Strayed, Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Love and Life from Dear Sugar
Tagged: Love, Relationships, Leaving, Breakups, Letting Go
“We can spend our lives letting the world tell us who we are. Sane or insane. Saints or sex addicts. Heroes or victims. Letting history tell us how good or bad we are. Letting our past decide our future. Or we can decide for ourselves. And maybe it's our job to invent something better.”
— Chuck Palahniuk, Choke
Tagged: ENFP, ENTP, Change, Revolutionary, Self-Direction
“You have to keep recycling yourself.”
— Chuck Palahniuk, Invisible Monsters: A Novel
Tagged: Change, Self-Concept
“Close the door, change the record, clean the house, get rid of the dust. Stop being who you were and become who you are. ”
— Paulo Coelho, The Zahir
Tagged: Change, Starting Over, Becoming You
“If you ever find yourself in the wrong story, leave.”
— Mo Willems, You’re Allowed To Leave
Tagged: Leaving, Moving On, Self-Love
“What if I told you 10 years from now your life would be exactly the same? Doubt you'd be happy. So, why are you afraid of change?”
— Karen Salmansohn, Think Happy: Instant Peptalks to Boost Positivity
Tagged: Change, Inspirational, Motivational
“You don’t have to get a job that makes others feel comfortable about what they perceive as your success.”
— Cheryl Strayed, Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Love and Life from Dear Sugar
Tagged: Advice By Cheryl
“We do not grow absolutely, chronologically. We grow sometimes in one dimension, and not in another; unevenly. We grow partially. We are relative. We are mature in one realm, childish in another. The past, present, and future mingle and pull us backward, forward, or fix us in the present. We are made up of layers, cells, constellations.”
— Anaïs Nin, The Diary of Anais Nin, Vol. 4: 1944-1947
Tagged: Growth, Change, Growing Up
“We’re going to get older whether we like it or not, so the only question is whether we get on with our lives, or desperately cling to the past.”
— Ted Mosby, How I Met Your Mother, Season 4: Intervention
Tagged: Change, Aging, Growing Up, growing older, The future, The Past
“You can’t just skip ahead to where you think your life should be.”
— Lily Aldrin, How I Met Your Mother
Tagged: Life, Change, HIMYM, how i met your mother
“Stop thinking that everyone is having more sex than you, that everyone has more friends than you, that everyone out is having more fun than you. Not because it’s not true (it might be!) but because that kind of thinking leaves you frozen.”
— Ryan O'Connell, You're Not Making The Most Out Of Your Twenties
Tagged: Sex, Relationships, Envy, Friendship, Friends, Jealousy, Change, Fear
“20-somethings have the tendency to imagine that their 20s are the last chance they’re going to have to experiment, explore, and party. This is a false premise. Restaurants and cafes continue to let people over 29 through their doors. They even serve them alcohol.”
— Holden Desalles, 15 Things To Keep Doing In Your 20s
Tagged: 20s, 30s, Quarter-Life Crisis, Growing Up, growing older, Experimentation, Mistakes, Change
“The 20s? My title for that period of my life would be, ‘It was the Worst of Times, it was the Worst of Times…' Did I mention it was the hardest time of my life?”
— Lisa Kudrow, The Real Lisa Kudrow: TV Guide
Tagged: 20s, Struggle, 20-something, Growing Up, Change
“You’ll be fine. You’re 25. Feeling [unsure] and lost is part of your path. Don’t avoid it. See what those feelings are showing you and use it. Take a breath. You’ll be okay. Even if you don’t feel okay all the time.”
— Louis C.K., Louis C.K. Quotes
Tagged: Life, Change, Being 25, 20-something, 20s, Growing Up, Unsure, Maturation
“Twenty-somethings who don’t feel anxious and incompetent at work are usually overconfident or underemployed.”
— Meg Jay, The Defining Decade: Why Your Twenties Matter--And How to Make the Most of Them Now
Tagged: Twenty-Something, 20-something, Adulting, Jobs
“Life will never feel like it’s ‘supposed to…’ If always trying to live like we’re ‘supposed to,’ we’re never going to actually live.”
— Paul Angone, 101 Secrets For Your Twenties
Tagged: Life, Supposed To, Growing Up, 20s, 20-something
“Our twenties are about what we plant in the ground, not about what we harvest. We can’t keep pulling our seeds out of the dirt before it has time to grow.”
— Paul Angone, All Groan Up
Tagged: 20s, 20-something, Change, Planting Seeds
“Success in your twenties is more about setting the table than enjoying the feast.”
— Paul Angone, 101 Secrets For Your Twenties
Tagged: Twenties, 20-something, Delayed Gratification, Love, Career
“You can only become truly accomplished at something you love. Don’t make money your goal. Instead pursue the things you love doing and then do them so well that people can’t take their eyes off of you.”
— Maya Angelou, What We Can All Learn From Maya Angelou
Tagged: Passion, Career, 20-something
“The goal of life is not to live comfortably. Comfortable is a quicksand. You must keep moving forward or agree to sign the waiver that you understand the risk of being suffocated by perks, 401K’s and ‘well hey, at least it’s a job.”
— Paul Angone, 29 Declarations That Will Absolutely Change Your 20s
Tagged: Comfort, Stagnancy, 20s, 20-something, Career, Jobs
“There are worse things than being thirty-five, single, and female in New York. Like: Being twenty-five, singled, and female in New York. It's a rite of passage few women would want to repeat. It's about sleeping with the wrong men, wearing the wrong clothes, having the wrong roommate, saying the wrong thing, being ignored, getting fired, not being taken seriously, and generally being treated like shit. But it's necessary.”
— Candace Bushell, Sex and the City
Tagged: Twenty-Five, Thirty-Five, 20-something, 30-Something, Single, New York, Change, Mistakes, Making Mistakes
“Don’t try to be young. Just open your mind. Stay interested in stuff. There are so many things I won’t live long enough to find out about, but I’m still curious about them. You know people who are already saying ‘I’m going to be 30 – oh, what am I going to do?’ Well, use that decade! Use them all!”
— Betty White
Tagged: Trying, 20-something, 30-Something, quarter life crisis, Growing Up, open-minded, Curiosity