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

“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., thrillist.com

“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, allgroanup.com

“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 wro…”

— Candace Bushell, amazon.com

“Success in your twenties is more about setting the table than enjoying the feast.”

— Paul Angone, amazon.com

“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, amazon.com

“Sometimes you have to live in precarious and temporary places. Unsuitable places. Wrong places. Sometimes the safe place won’t help you.”

— Jeanette Winterson, amazon.com

“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 fall…”

— Jamie Varon, medium.com

“Twenty-somethings who don’t feel anxious and incompetent at work are usually overconfident or underemployed.”

— Meg Jay, amazon.com

“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, m.imdb.com

“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 l…”

— Ryan O'Connell, thoughtcatalog.com

“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, amazon.com

“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, beeper117.tripod.com

“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, allgroanup.com

“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, quarterforyourcrisis.com

“You don’t have to get a job that makes others feel comfortable about what they perceive as your success.”

— Cheryl Strayed, amazon.com

“You live out the confusions until they become clear.”

— Anaïs Nin, amazon.com

“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…”

— Anaïs Nin, amazon.com

“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, amazon.com

“If you ever find yourself in the wrong story, leave.”

— Mo Willems, thoughtcatalog.com

“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 b…”

— Cheryl Strayed, amazon.com

“You have to keep recycling yourself.”

— Chuck Palahniuk, amazon.com

“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, thoughtcatalog.com

“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, amazon.com

“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 no…”

— Cheryl Strayed, amazon.com

“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, amazon.com

“You can’t just skip ahead to where you think your life should be.”

— Lily Aldrin, amazon.com

“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.”

— Stephen Lloyd, Ted Mosby, Josh Radnor, imdb.com

“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, thoughtcatalog.com

“You may do this, I tell you, it is permitted. Begin again the story of your life.”

— Jane Hirshfield, amazon.com