"When you're young, you just go banging about, but you're more sensitive as you grow older"
About this Quote
Then she pivots: "more sensitive as you grow older". Sensitivity here isn’t sentimentality; it’s calibration. With time, you develop a finer-grained awareness of other people’s boundaries, of your own limits, of what lingers after the impact. Kerr’s career makes that contrast land. She built a screen persona on composure and intelligence, often playing women whose stillness carried the drama. From that vantage point, aging isn’t decline but refinement: the instrument gets better at detecting tone.
The subtext is quietly defiant in a culture that sells aging, especially for actresses, as a narrowing. Kerr reframes it as expanded perception. The cost is implied: you’re "more sensitive" because you’ve been bruised, because you’ve learned what can break. Yet the line refuses the usual nostalgia for youthful fearlessness. It suggests that maturity brings a different kind of courage: not the bravery of charging ahead, but the bravery of feeling more and acting anyway.
Quote Details
| Topic | Aging |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
| Cite |
Citation Formats
APA Style (7th ed.)
Kerr, Deborah. (2026, January 16). When you're young, you just go banging about, but you're more sensitive as you grow older. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/when-youre-young-you-just-go-banging-about-but-104197/
Chicago Style
Kerr, Deborah. "When you're young, you just go banging about, but you're more sensitive as you grow older." FixQuotes. January 16, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/when-youre-young-you-just-go-banging-about-but-104197/.
MLA Style (9th ed.)
"When you're young, you just go banging about, but you're more sensitive as you grow older." FixQuotes, 16 Jan. 2026, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/when-youre-young-you-just-go-banging-about-but-104197/. Accessed 13 Feb. 2026.







