Young Adult Literature Quotes & Sayings

I immediately thought of the stars. Stars. Heavenly bodies formed by huge clouds of dust and gas bumping
into one another, getting bigger, their gravity getting stronger. Once hot enough, nuclear fusion occurs. And then a star is formed.
People are shaped in a similar way - just like stars - excessive amounts of dust and hot gas. And like stars, everyone's life has a turning point prior to their big bang. The shit show before the creation. Y 'know, one of those moments that can fuck you up.
Cleopatra's was when her father named her joint regent at fourteen. Fucked-up.
Bruce Wayne's when he witnessed his parents get murdered. Fucked-up.
Charles Manson's when his mother sold him for a pitcher of beer. Fucked. Up.
Not to mention 'Helter Skelter. — Jorge Enrique Ponce

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

What is life but a fucked-up factory fabricating fuckups? — Jorge Enrique Ponce

There isn't a lot of poverty literature in the young-adult world. And I don't know why that is, but I think certainly I felt a gap. — Sherman Alexie

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

Epic, epic love is not about having someone. It's about being willing to give them up. It's sacrifice. It's my mom's theater tickets stuffed down at the bottom of her jewelry box. It's Noah and August. It's my sister and Annabelle. It's Jordan and his mom, the truth he reserves to protect her. And see, that's the thing I didn't understand. The thing no one tells you. That just because you find love doesn't mean it's yours to keep. Love never belongs to you. It belongs to the universe. — Rebecca Serle

... the primary trait of young adult literature is that the author's emphasis is on plot and character and not on his own brilliance. And because few people talk about whether a young adult work is commercial or literary; the two are still in sync, and everyone's benefitting. — Eliot Schrefer

We bite back the things we can't say and we cushion every surface for the inevitable moment when they all come fighting out. — Moira Fowley-Doyle

The truth is crazier than lies because lies are required to stick to possibilities - the truth isn't. — Caroline George

If you're going to give up so quickly, I don't think you'll last long but you should try telling yourself you won't ever give up. Nobody can say how this will turn out but you should try the hardest you've ever tried in your life so you'll have no regrets — Hitori Nakano

He [an earnest young reporter] seemed to share the view of many intelligent, well-educated, well-meaning people that, while adult literature may aim to be art, the object of children's books is to whip the little rascals into shape. — Katherine Paterson

My first jailbreak began when a coarse-toothed mechanic's file crashed through the window of the Deeper Harbour Police
Station at two in the morning. The file bounced three or four times before clattering to a halt among a scatter of shattered glass. The file spun a little and came to rest, like a compass needle pointing somewhere far off the edge of the map. Looking back from right here and right now I believe I would like to start this story right then - three days after I had just turned fourteen - spending my birthday in jail. - SINKING DEEPER — Steve Vernon

In 1938, Louise Rosenblatt introduced reader response theory or the transactional view of reading. She asserted that what the reader brings to the reading act - his or her world of experiences, personality, and current frame of mind - is just as important in interpreting the text as what the author writes. According to this view, reading is a fusion of text and reader. — Carl M. Tomlinson

I've been an avid consumer of young adult literature since I was one, and I think some people leave that stuff behind when they become old adults, but I never did. I was always interested in the fantasy world created in those novels. — Diablo Cody

Everybody knows, nobody's talking - from LIE
debut novel coming September 1st from St. Martin's Press — Caroline Bock

When I first began writing, and I told people what I wrote, I'd get a blank stare and sometimes a 'Huh?' They weren't sure what young adult literature was. Now everyone knows. — Mary E. Pearson

A lot of people have no idea that right now Y.A. (young adult). is the Garden of Eden of literature. — Sherman Alexie

The house was the color of baby vomit. — Pixie Lynn Whitfield

It will begin with the six who now tread the streets of a city where the stone pinnacle erects like a reed amongst long grass. Where a bridge expands across a gorge, drifts a cloud buzzing with a million stings. There, these six shall bleed. There, these six shall die, and like a plague shall spread the wings that carry the cloud till they consume the city, and with it, the strength that fuels all of your lives. Farewell, children of the new world, and may your deaths be swift. — Najeev Raj Nadarajah

I took a deep, deep breath and held it in my core; kept it close behind my protruding, fleshless ribs. I swallowed it whole. I was home. — Ava Bloomfield

Ari's words felt like drops of sunlight upon my skin, and my frame was burning with longing. — Petra March

It didn't help that I was never allowed to study anything remotely contemporary until the last year of university: there was never any sense of that leading to this. If anything, my education gave me the opposite impression, of an end to cultural history round about the time that Forster wrote A Passage to India. The quickest way to kill all love for the classics, I can see now, is to tell young people that nothing else maters, because then all they can do is look at them in a museum of literature, through glass cases. Don't touch! And don't think for a moment that they want to live in the same world as you! And so a lot of adult life
if your hunger and curiosity haven't been squelched by your education
is learning to join up the dots that you didn't even know were there. — Nick Hornby

I first encountered Bradbury's writing when I was pretty young. He's a great bridge author between young-adult fiction and literature. — Sam Weller

The light was luminescence and gloom, like the sky at midnight speckled with stars. All she could smell was the ocean... — Samantha Lee Churcher

There is a very big difference between writing for children and writing for young adults. The first thing I would say is that 'Young Adult' does not mean 'Older Children', it really does mean young but adult, and the category should be seen as a subset of adult literature, not of children's books. — Garth Nix

He speaks in that strange sports talk, telling me about the start of the new season and asks if I follow baseball.
No. I really don't.
He assures me if I stay in town long enough I will become a baseball fan. It's a requirement of living in St. Louis. Everyone is a Cardinal's fan.
"Loyal," he tells me. St. Louis is a loyal town. — Gwenn Wright

I have a passion for children's literature. Young adult literature. I love it. I've always loved it. — Gretchen Rubin

'Harry Potter' opened so many doors for young adult literature. It really did convince the publishing industry that writing for children was a viable enterprise. And it also convinced a lot of people that kids will read if we give them books that they care about and love. — Rick Riordan

I liked the darkness, the dusty bay window, the view over the grey, muddy harbour and the towering cliffs beyond. How could I think of all that and dislike it, really, when in every nook and cranny I felt Peter's eyes peering out, watching me? — Ava Bloomfield

So much of young adult literature has turned dark, almost pathological. It's almost as if there is a race to see who can be the most dysfunctional. — Richard Paul Evans

Sometimes books feel like the only thing that keep her sane. Actually, she knows that they're the only reason she's still even vaguely okay right now. That's what she clings to: reading great books and seeing great films and, for as long as she's immersed in them, being able to forget, if only for a short time, about the reality of her life. — Steph Bowe

Because of you, Michael, my heart begins to grow wings. — C. Kennedy

I thought I'd been condescended to as an Indian - that was nothing compared to the condescension for writing young adult literature. — Sherman Alexie

Words, to me, are the same as an instrument is to a musician. I never know where this typewriter is going to take me until I begin. I never know what I'm feeling until I read over what I have written. — Tessa Emily Hall

Esperanza leaned around the side of the truck. As they rounded a curve, it appeared as if the mountains pulled away from each other, like a curtain opening on stage, revealing the San Joaquin Valley beyond. Flat and spacious, it spread out like a blanket of patchwork fields. Esperanza could see no end to the plots of yellow, brown, and shades of green. The road finally leveled out on the valley floor, and she gazed back at the mountains from where they'd come. They looked like monstrous lions' paws resting at the edge of ridge. — Pam Munoz Ryan

Only where children gather
is there any real chance of fun. — Mignon McLaughlin

I get that. For you, it's more than following a bunch of rules - no sex, no booze, no swear words, pray every night and twice on Sunday. — Laura Anderson Kurk

Not all stories end happily nor tragically. Most of them just need to be continued. — Prex J.D.V. Ybasco