“We’re young, Margot and Peter and I! You grown-ups have had your chance! But look at us . . . If we begin thinking of all the horror in the world, we’re lost! We’re trying to hold on to some kind of ideals . . . when everything . . . ideals, hopes . . . everything is being destroyed! It isn’t our fault that the world is in such a mess! We weren’t around when all this started! So don’t try to take it out on us!” ~ Anne Frank
 
            This quote is not only heartbreakingly true, but the meaning of it stands the testimony of time throughout the years and years of when these words were first said by a girl too young to go.  When Anne says this, you know what she’s really about; she’s not just a sarcastic, annoying, outspoken teenage girl, but much more.  This shows Anne really is someone who cares deeply about others and what happens to them, how they feel and makes sure they get out of it alright.  Anne was no brat, nor a rascal, but a young girl who puts deep thoughts into the ones she cares about.  What’s behind this quote exactly?  Behind this quote is the meaning of youth in a troubled time.  It shows what can happen to children in so much horror.  When you’re young, that’s your chance to have fun, be free, and dream of what good can come in the future.  Not to be pent up inside a secret room for several years, where every time you make a noise, your life could be gone in an instant. Where all you can do is hope for the best to come, while the horrors still surround you through the wooden walls you live inside of.  Where if the walls come down, you are exposed to a horrible death because of who you are.  Youth is meant to be spent freely, never to be caged in because someone thinks they’re better than you, someone thinks they are superior among the rest of the people in the world.  The quote really does help one to understand who Anne really is; she’s a young girl who doesn’t want to grow up.  Growing up as she did only made it harder for her to press on as she did.  This shows that with every joke she’s cracked, every comment she made, every act she’s pulled off, was a girl that was too confident and proud of her own self to admit that she was scared.  Not just for herself, but for the ones she cared for that were going through exactly what she was. The years spent in your youth are meant for dreaming, not for fearing when you go to sleep that everything and everyone will be gone, including you by the time you wake up.  Nor is it for waking up everyday, again and again to find out that it’s not just one horrible nightmare, while in reality it is.