Ya Books Quotes & Sayings

It's true that when you read YA you rarely have to read about middle-aged men having affairs. Personally I consider that a plus. — Erin Bow

Keep going' she told herself, 'Don't look back.' But she looked anyways. — Holly Black

Writing is something you Do and not discuss. Talk is cheap, wishes are free and a fool is included with every purchase. So spend your time wisely. — Jaime Reed

Maybe it was that nearly everyone else was dead and she felt a little bit dead too, but she figured that even a vampire deserved to be saved. Maybe she ought to leave him, but she wasn't going to. — Holly Black

Evil surrounds everyone, but not everyone is able to confront it. — George A. Kos

I come to oil country with a book about radicals who wish for the end of pipelines. But that's not what it's about. It's the friction point of prosperity and concern, ability and disability, the loss of bodily presence and the gain of ghost messages. It's misplaced outrage and well-placed courage. It's banjo song and smoke in your eye. Stories hinge there, swinging this way and that. — Kate Inglis

Be careful," Aidan called from the bed. "You don't know what he might do."
"We all know what you'd do, though, don't we? — Holly Black

Writing YA fantasy books is like sneaking out after dark, falling down the rabbit hole and ending up in the most exciting world... ever! — Carolyn Hockley

Suddenly, I can't move. I can't speak. I am set in stone, but it's a glorious chiseled sort of stone. — Travis Thrasher

With the right books, we can change everything. — Rachel Caine

She took a deep breath, "Last chance. Are you in need of rescuing?"
His expression turned very strange, almost as if she'd struck him, "Yes," he said finally. — Holly Black

Life doesn't change when you meet a guy and life doesn't fall apart when you break up with one. We are teaching young female readers the wrong things through books not only expressing this point, but also using these two concepts as turning plot points of novels. — Meghan Blistinsky

Hearing my brother's words coming out of Henry, this stranger in a strange town, made me feel wild with all the loss - wild and wired with no place to put those feelings. — Laura Anderson Kurk

Little mouse," a voice said through the keyhole. "Don't you know the more you wriggle, the greater the cat's delight? — Holly Black

Life had handed me a different set of cards and I was going to have to play my hand either way. — Brittany Hawes

Creativity...passion...sweat...heartbreak...inspiration...and lots of hard work...that is what books are made of! — Tara Fairfield

You won't find the tales I bear in any books ... My tales are from the Moon Realm. - Ebb Autumn — Richard Due

I've published over 100 books - and that is divided about 50/50 adult and young adult. Lately, I have been writing more YA, which is such a great genre to write it. I don't have a favourite (I usually say it's the last book I've written), but certain books do stick in the mind. My very first YA novel, The Children of Lir, will always be special to me, and, of course The Alchemyst because it was a series I'd wanted to write for ages. — Michael Scott

In terms of age, I think I've covered about as wide a range as is possible, having written everything from picture books to early chapter books to middle grade novels to YA to one adult novel - and having been editor and lead writer for a magazine for retired people! — Bruce Coville

Jo told me once that she was an old woman everywhere but in her studio. "There I'm only myself," she'd said. Standing in the middle of masterpieces that only Jo had ever seen and touched, I knew what she meant. — Laura Anderson Kurk

Gay kids aren't a "plot point" that you can play with. Gay kids are real, actual kids, teenagers, growing up into awesome adults, and they don't have the books they need to reflect that. Growing up, my nose was constantly stuck in a book. Growing up as a lesbian, I was told over and over and over by the lack of gayness in said books that I did not exist. That I wasn't important enough to tell stories about. That I was invisible. Why are we telling our kids this? Why are we telling them that they're a minority, and they don't deserve the same rights as straights, that they're going to grow up in a world that despises them, that the intolerance of humanity will never change, that they're worthless. It's not true. — Sarah Diemer

I see now that dismissing YA books because you're not a young adult is a little bit like refusing to watch thrillers on the grounds that you're not a policeman or a dangerous criminal, and as a consequence, I've discovered a previously ignored room at the back of the bookstore that's filled with masterpieces I've never heard of. — Nick Hornby

And as for going into a bookstore and not finding a book suitable for your 13-year-old ... maybe you should do some research before you go in? And I'm being serious here. There are a bunch of great blogs that will tell you the content of books. Reading Teen is one of them, and I've seen others, and I love what they do because they make YA books feel safe to protective parents. There are plenty of YA books that celebrate joy and beauty. Now, I would argue that many of them are also the "dark" books to which the article refers, and that saying they aren't suggests a pretty inattentive reader ... but that's neither here nor there. I'm not trying to bicker with the careful parents. I'm just saying: do some research and you'll be surprised what you find.
So, that's what I'm going to say about it. — Veronica Roth

Children's and YA books are about being brave and kind, about learning wisdom and love, about that journey into and through maturity that we all keep starting, and starting again, no matter how old we get. I think that's why so many adults read YA: we're never done coming of age. — Betsy Cornwell

No one can steal your freedom from you. You can only give it away. — Bella James

I didn't even notice that my shoes were full of mud by the time I reached the rocky shore. There was ragged yellow police tape tied to some branches, dancing in the wind. It was as if the tape was waving, welcoming me back to place where I would have died. — Richard P. Denney

We have all sorts of words that could describe us. But we get to choose which ones are most important. — Jennifer E. Smith

Do I look like I want to be involved in your teen love saga? Ask someone who cares. — Priya Ardis

Calling a book "Young Adult" is just a fancy way of saying the book is censored. — Oliver Markus

Note to self: don't throw things at girls. — Emlyn Chand

Okay! Here's a quote for ya. My mother said "Don't read trashy books". I loved my mother but I didn't ALWAYS do what she said. — Betty

You can stand in the middle of a street and let the drops fall on you and feel refreshed. It's like God's little sprinkler. — Travis Thrasher

Breathing in the scent of his hair, I realized I'd needed him my whole life, before we even met. First, his music and the way he taught me through books and recordings. Then, he saved my life and refused to abandon me no matter how much I deserved it. — Jodi Meadows

Almost immediately, I found the red door into the library. I opened it idly- and the breath stopped in my throat. It was the same room I remembered: the shelves, the lion-footed table, the white bass-relief of Clio. But now, tendrils of dark green ivy grew between the shelves, reaching toward the books as if they were hungry to read. White mist flowed along the floor, rippling and tumbling as if blown by wind. Across the ceiling wove a network of icy ropes like tree roots. They dripped- not little droplets like the ice melting off a tree but grape-sized drops of water, like giant tears, that splashed on the table, plopped to the floor. — Rosamund Hodge

Why fear death? It is the most beautiful adventure in life. — Charles Frahman

Soft sun shone down on a misty cathedral at the opposite end of a football-field length courtyard. The cathedral had a long pointed tower with beautiful rose and ivory stained glass windows. Pink-petal flowers and deep green ivy climbed the stones from the ground to it's roof. A large fountain stood in the middle of the courtyard with water falling from several lion's heads. Between the misty air and rolling slope of the earth, the grounds reminded me of a long lost fairy tale. — Priya Ardis

I have always kept a stack of library books next to my bed as a lifeline. If I ever woke in the middle of the night too scared to move or too sad to roll over, the books were my saviors. — Julie Halpern

I'm just the librarian. I can only give you the books. I can't give you the answers. — Kami Garcia

Reading always calmed me down: filling my head with other - made up - people's problems and conflicts made my own seem less terrible, less real. — Heather James

Books written by boys are given very different treatment to those written by girls: they're even given very different covers. People also expect, in this YA-booming world, girls to be less experimental than boys: girls are achieving a lot of success, but they're confined. — Sarah Rees Brennan

I'll always choose you.

Gabe Willoughby — Hope Collier

Marilynn ... passed out black cases to everyone. I opened mine to find an iPad inside. Several candidates whistled. Despite my agitated state, it impressed me too. Maybe wizard school wasn't going to be as lame as I had thought.
"All of your schedules and assignments will be done on these," Marilynn explained. "The whole school is on these. We've had them for awhile now. — Priya Ardis

Special Agent Brad Wolgast hated Texas. He hated everything about it.
[ ... ] He hated the billboards and the freeways and the faceless subdivisions and the Texas flag, which flew over everything, always as big as a circus tent; he hated the giant pickup trucks everybody drove, no matter that gas was thirteen bucks a gallon and the world was slowly seaming itself to death like a package of peas in a microwave. He hated the boots and the belts and the way people talked, ya'll this and ya'll that, as if they spent the day ropin' and ridin', not cleaning teeth and selling insurance and doing the books, like people did everywhere. — Justin Cronin

In the dream, Tana's mother loved her more than anyone or anything. More than death. — Holly Black

Life, Jersey Girl, sometimes pauses. It stops. Sometimes we don't even realize how everything around us is moving so quickly while we're standing in the middle of it, allowing it to pass us by. Most of us, if not all, just lose the why. Some of us never figure it out to begin with. We lose sight of the purpose that wakes us up every morning and pushes our day forward. We lose a sense of hope and the feeling of life in general. We view life as more of a test, one that's trying to beat us down every day. — E.L. Montes

There exists a microscopic breed of brain beetle, commonly known as an 'idea'. An idea desires only one thing: To catch the perfect brain wave. — Leah Broadby

You said you were allowed to lose it,' some part of her reminded herself.
'Not yet, not yet. — Holly Black

Life ain't like books. Books got somebody writin' 'em and tryin' to entertain ya. Life is more like a set of Legos. Unless you take care of 'em, you lose a few pieces and you end up steppin' on 'em with bare feet. You gotta take care of your life. — Laura Moncur

Please,Tana,please.' -lots of characters in The Coldest Girl in Coldtown — Holly Black

My own drawing was a house made of books, but where there should have been a door, there was a book, and where there should have been windows, there were books, and where the chimney should have been open to let the smoke out, a book was covering the hole, so if anyone was in the house, they couldn't get out. They'd suffocate, to be found years later, a desiccated corpse still marking its place in the book it had been reading with a knobby finger bone, head caved in by an avalanche of fallen books. As I said, I liked books. — Nova Ren Suma

He's so powerful. Who knows maybe he's advanced past eating — Priya Ardis

You know how there's that one person who stumbles into your life and you instantly have a connection with them? Someone who's a genuinely good person. Someone you just know you can build a great bond with, and it doesn't have to be in a romantic way either. It can be with someone you have no attraction to whatsoever, you just instantly recognize something in them and they in you. Like in another realm, in another life, you were meant to be together in some way. Whether with a mother, daughter, sibling, best friend, or romantic partner, it's a strong, unexplainable connection between two individuals — E.L. Montes

I love the Hunger Games books. Certainly, the fans are there. They're grown enormously since the beginning. When I first brought the books to Lionsgate, they had sold about 150,000 copies, which is a very good result for a YA book. And to their credit, Lionsgate was very excited and committed to the movie, from the beginning. — Nina Jacobson

The books that stuck with me most as a child were 'A Wrinkle In Time', 'Dracula', 'Hatchet', 'Bunnicula', 'White Fang', and this YA/kids' book called 'Nobody's Fault' where a kid drowns one weekend as friends play around a flooded ditch. — Nate Powell

Natalie, who was the author of a series of wildly successful Hunger Games meets Gossip Girl YA books about a clique of girls at a postapocalyptic prep school who have to simultaneously fight for popularity and for the survival of the planet - hadn — Doree Shafrir

Perhaps death is just a big lie. — Bella James

I've always wanted to be a part of that experience of writing to an audience that is just starting to fall in love with books. When I felt that my writing for adults had become cemented, I decided to write a YA series. — Sarah Mlynowski

[T]he incomparable Diana Wynne Jones, one of the finest mythic fiction writers of our age, who left us too early (due to cancer) two days ago. I'm so grateful to her for the extraordinary books she has left behind, which have inspired a whole generation of younger writers. She was writing brilliant YA fantasy before the genre (as we know it now) even existed; she was writing enchanting "wizard school" books long before Harry Potter was a gleam in Rowling's eye; and her knowledge of how to weave mythic/folkloric themes into contemporary fiction was second to no one's. Diana will be terribly missed, but through her magical stories, her light will stay on. — Terri Windling

This is no tall story. Nor is it a short story. Indeed, a story cannot be measured, for their realities stretch far beyond a page or one person's life. — Leah Broadby

I focus a little more on pacing when I write books in the young adult category, and of course there's the great American fear of anything sexual, so that's somewhat backed off in YA. — Paolo Bacigalupi

A couple of customers interrupted [...] who wanted to know if we had some YA book about ants and aliens I'd never heard of. — Shaun David Hutchinson

Isn't it strange??

When you don't have something you want more and more even when you see it on the TV for example the the drug from the Limitless... you want it don't ya??

A drug which makes your the smartest person on the earth... A drug which helps you understand fast everything... you can read in about 1500 books in a year... isn't it crazy... it will be awesome to have this drug... but it's not possible unfortunately... as for now...let's go in the real world shall we?

What happens when you want something... let's take it that you get it... you want more and more and more... when you have from something which is like candy like 1000 in one place... somehow a limit comes... it comes the moment when you can't eat anymore - Isn't it interesting this fact? — Deyth Banger

You eat canned tuna fish and you absorb protein. Then, if you're lucky, someone give you Dover Sole and you experience nourishment. It's the same with books. — Lois Lowry

This is what we do. We make tea and read books and watch people die. — Megan Crewe

At this point, caffeine wasn't for pleasure, it was sheer survival. — Stormy Smith

All of my books, which are supposedly, I mean they're called YA novels, my hope is that adults would find no reason not to read them if they read them. — Matthew Tobin Anderson

Home should never be dark or full of shadows and secrets. It should be bright and full of open doors. It should be full of stories wanting to be told. — Travis Thrasher

His voice had a faint trace of an accent she couldn't place - one that made her pretty sure he was no local kid infected the night before. — Holly Black

I'm going to take off your gag. And if you try to bite me or grab me or anything, I'll hit you with this thing as hard as I can as many times as I can. Understood? — Holly Black

Money is an unavoidable consequence, but it isn't the reason I write; if it was, I wouldn't have written any of the YA books, because advances in that field are small compared to what I'd got now for an 'adult' DW. — Terry Pratchett

There are a thousand beautiful things behind that look. A marvelous sort of ache that only a few people know about. Some miraculous sort of sorrow she's managed to walk away from. — Travis Thrasher

One final time I told myself I wasn't abducting my little brother. — Marcus Sedgwick

I don't want to be a vampire' she told herself. But in her dreams, she kind of did. — Holly Black

In so many YA books the heroine, who's just a regular girl, has to choose between two dreamboats who are both, for no particular reason, madly in love with her, which is probably why these books are labeled fiction. — Paul Rudnick

You know, when I was little, my dad told me that if I misbehaved, he'd send me to live with a witch who ate children.'

'Really?'

She nods. 'I was so afraid of the witch. Feelings are magnified when you're young, I think, and the fear can stay with you for a long time. I eventually grew out of the fear but even now when I read something with a witch, my mind always traces back to that story. Isn't that weird?'

'How'd you grow out of it?' I ask. 'The fear?'

She takes a long moment to answer. 'I read lots and lots of books about witches. — Stephanie Oakes

I think of this girl, this bright light coming from such a dark place. I know that the things she believes about God and the Bible and hope and all that are very real to her. They're not nice sayings on Twitter just to fill a box. They're the things she truly believes.
I'm not sure I'm ready to rejoice, and I'm not quite ready to pray.
The cool thing is that Marvel knows this. She knows this and doesn't seem to mind. — Travis Thrasher

I am made of a thousand ghosts. Only you can shoot me down. — Bella James

She took particular comfort in certain familiar sights and sounds that marked her day: the buzz of the fluorescent lights, the pale figures sprawled silent and motionless over their reading, the reassuring feel of her book cart as she wheeled it down the aisle, and the books themselves, symbols of order on their backs - young adulthood reduced to "YA," mystery reduced to a tiny red skull. — T.E.D. Klein

Behind Tana there was the sounds of splintering wood, as though something very large had hot the door. "No," she said softly, "Oh no. No."
"Leave me," said Gavriel.
... "Shut up or I might," she told him. — Holly Black

Are you sure?" Aidan asked, "Gavriel's still a vampire."
"He warned me about you and about them. He didn't have to. I'm not going to repay that by-" she hesitated, then frowned. "What did you call him?"
"That's his name," Aidan sighed, "Gavriel. The other vampires, while they were tying me to the bed, they said his name."
"Oh." With a final tug she pulled the blanked free and tossed it over to 'Gavriel — Holly Black

I don't like writing romance in my books because that's the turning point of 90% of YA sci-fi/fantasy books and, quite frankly, it gets annoying after a while. The protagonist has more important things to worry about than boys and whether or not they like her. — Meghan Blistinsky

So yeah, maybe this will be the rest of our lives. Pot roast and Diet Cokes and my parents making eyes at each other. As for those slaps and punches and hateful words, we'll just sweep those under the rug or wherever they can go. — Travis Thrasher

Books in the YA genre, in particular, should use proper grammar because they're more of an example to young people than adults books are. — Laura Kreitzer

What kind of life is that? Do you know? Do you? Because I know. I lived that life. For years I lived it. Without you. And I've never been more miserable. I'd rather fight everyday to keep you near me than have you walk away. I'd rather pay that price, Max. I'm not afraid to pay it. I can't believe you're standing here telling me that you are."
~Layla to Max; TORN — Laney McMann

The sun, through the filter of the trees, glints green off the cells of her suit, outlines her soft curves. I'm overcome with visions of my father poring over his books, and the wet, verdant forest floor, and newts pausing over toxic yellow candy, and leaves flying up from the impact of Bryan's body hitting the ground. Another, confused part of me hears my father's voice calling the refs scum, trash, slime. With flashes of fury at Marisa, mixed with a sad, all-consuming longing that feels dangerously like love, I pluck her hands from my face and push her away. -from Fireseed One — Catherine Stine

My name is Arianna Morganna Brittany DuLac
you can imagine why I went by the name Ryan. — Priya Ardis

But the not-very-highbrow truth of the matter was that the reading was how I got my ya-yas out.
For the sake of my bookish reputation I upgraded to Tolstoy and Steinbeck before I understood them, but my dark secret was that really, I preferred the junk. The Dragonriders of Pern, Flowers in the Attic, The Clan of the Cave Bear. This stuff was like my stash of Playboys under the mattress. — Julie Powell

Every man dies. Not every man truly lives." Sir William Wallace — Amanda M. Thrasher

I think more people are going to continue reading YA as well as reading other books because they have learned that they can find books there which they will truly love: a teenage protagonist is close enough to adult so readers of whichever age can sympathise and empathise with them. — Sarah Rees Brennan

As a kid, I went from reading kids' books to reading science fiction to reading, you know, adult fiction. There was never any gap. YA was a thing when I was a teenager, but it was a library category, not a marketing category, and you never really felt like it was a huge section. — John Allison

Did you recently turn into a jerk or have you been one since birth? — Priya Ardis

If we weigh the significance of a book by the effect it has on its readers, then the great children's books suddenly turn up very high on the list. — Laura Miller

Pretend mic in hand, she danced into the bedroom, singing Rod Stewart's "Do Ya Think I'm Sexy." She executed a few dance steps she'd read about in books on modern dance. Losing herself to the groove of the music, she swayed and gyrated as she belted out the lyrics. She toed off her shoes and shimmied out of her jeans, bending to slip them over her feet...
"I'm thinking this is a sight and a sound I could get used to. — Vonnie Davis

I'm sorry,' she said to each of the dead as she unzipped and unfastened their things, 'I'm sorry Courtney. I'm sorry Marcus. I'm sorry Rachel. I'm sorry Jon. I'm sorry I'm alive and you're dead. I'm sorry I was asleep. I'm sorry I didn't save you and now I'm taking your things. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. — Holly Black