Young Adult Fiction Quotes

A true leader is not meant to be greeted with unanimous praise by his people. A leader is meant to be questioned, to be suspect, to be hated. If he is not, then one can easily assume that either he has not challenged his abilities as a leader by making a decision that creates a split between the people, or he is forcing his subjects to bow before him.

~ Evan Meekins

Even though we don't admit it, every single one of us aspires to be like somebody, whether they live in the world today, within the bard's lyrics, or on the pages in the Library

~ Evan Meekins

If we truly detach from our childhood and abandon our inherent romanticism, then we shred any bit of humanity left in us.

~ Evan Meekins

Milcas raced out his door, anxious to find the answer to this riddle and discover the source of hope for a Roegan in Fargranther; the propellant of an unheard of, forgotten, impossible, and by all accounts, damned idea.

~ Evan Meekins

The dominoes of fate are falling down as we are speaking, and Ferriar knows what will happen when the last one crashes down.

~ Evan Meekins

Some justice, though did not deal with kindheartedness or good feeling toward others. No, justice had a darker side, a gray area where it mingled alongside vengeance, and only the wise and pure of heart were able to tell the two apart. That kind of justice was swift. It was only called upon afer mercy and morals fail. It was the darkest form of goodness known to anyone, even the gods, and required only the strongest, most daring men to bring about.

~ Evan Meekins

Do not forget about the butterflies.

~ Evan Meekins

They were rebellious through their artistic expression and their uplifting spirits

~ Evan Meekins

He is a free man, not because is in a poition of political power and influence that you will never be able to achieve, and not because he has more character and heart in his fingertip than you have in your entire being, but because he is a man, and is thus entitled to be free.

~ Evan Meekins

The festive music died down and the granite pillars were replaced with rotted wooden beams as he continued down the alleyways. The scent of fresh flowers turned to mold, and the colorful mosiacs of honor and nobility were nonexistent. Run-down tenements were shadowed by its surrounding buildings, as if the capital itself wanted to conceal its existence.

~ Evan Meekins

the illusion that power lies within the hands of the common man is more important than legitimate efficiency within the government.

~ Evan Meekins

One can learn from what is not said.

~ C. Kennedy

She had feared the worst, and even though at that very moment she would have liked to wring her neck, she was happy to learn that suicide was not one of the stupid things that Eve had in her repertoire. Suicide made no sense: situations change, people change, and the problems of today may find a solution tomorrow. So long as you’re in the game you can change the final score, but if you take yourself out of it, you’ll never know how it might have ended, and you let the world win.

~ Mirella Muffarotto

Most people think that love doesn’t stand the test of time – that it is eternal only as long as it lasts – but love is an unquenchable flame. It is only the fires of momentary desire that burn too fast and go out far too quickly without leaving behind a single trace.

~ Mirella Muffarotto

This unrequited love business was driving him crazy. It was a feeling that took you over, mind, body, and soul. Worse than a drug that tore apart your flesh and spirit, and without which you simply could not live.

~ Mirella Muffarotto

On some deep, unconscious level, he had always known it to be true. He was an invention, a fictional character. Jacob Lightfoot didn't exist.

~ Sharon Sant

I’d stumbled upon the inner sanctuary of a woman who loved the world. Loved the faces of people she saw. Loved the way a hand looked when it was relaxed. Loved the way a woman looked when she touched her own face. The way a man looked when he opened himself to her. Loved the way wind changed a tree or a field or a child’s hair. The beauty of a neck meeting a shoulder. The softness of a smile that wasn’t forced.

~ Laura Anderson Kurk

My mom told me once that Wyatt loved her the way a boy will love his mother, but I loved her the way an artist loves another. Jo taught me what that meant.

~ Laura Anderson Kurk

Look at this one.” I picked up a small painting of a man with dark hair and a short, dark beard. He wore a loose shirt, cobalt blue, unbuttoned at the top, showing a prominent, knobby collarbone. He looked…complicated and hungry. She’d captured him focused intensely on a book, his face pressed against a wall like he was resting. Or waiting.

~ Laura Anderson Kurk

I worried I would miss it, and I knew, from losing Wyatt, that things happen the moment the soul is released. Wyatt had been there in the school, watching me, making sure I survived. Souls linger…they do. They linger a bit before they turn toward eternity. It could be that no matter how perfect their future will be, the past still tugs for a moment.

~ Laura Anderson Kurk

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

We both knew the place we were at and what that meant. We both felt the regret and the loss. We both knew that without me, none of it would have been possible. Without me, everything would be different. Without me, we wouldn't have been there... lying in that bed in the first place.

~ Megan Duke

Words exist only in theory. And then one ordinary day you run into a word that exists only in theory. And you meet it face to face. And then that word becomes someone you know. That word becomes someone you hate. And you take that word with you wherever you go. And you can't pretend it isn't there.

~ Bejamin Alire Sáenz

When I try to achieve greatness, it spits on me the night before.

~ Monroe Ariel

There’s nothing.Nothing to hold on to while the current takes me.Whatever I might have had until today, I’ve lost.I feel my love for her, swelling; bloating into something that’s about to explode, like an abscess that’s been allowed to rot for too long, but the pain drowns it so completely I know I’m never coming back out. This feeling, that you’re choking and that your body is underwater, immersed in the ocean, a dense flood that overpowers your breathing abilities, and your will to survive gets drowned right along with it. And as I’m drowning I see her face and hear her voice—and it doesn’t give me hope, it terrifies me. I’m terrified because I know she’s going to be the death of me. I’m terrified because I know I won’t be able to cope. I’m terrified because the darkness is the only true friend I’ve ever had and if it wants to embrace me I don’t have the power to make it stop.

~ Kady Hunt

I want to say that yes, it was worth it; that I could suffer through pain and torture for her and go through a lot more than what Puck and his friends are capable of, and I can do it for all of eternity; suffer, until she realizes how much I love her. But she’s gone before I can say any of it. I wait till she’s left.And then I reach for my wallet.Hidden inside one of the flaps is a piece of paper that barely conceals a razorblade. Its frayed edges still have my blood on them. The blood is from the previous cuts I’ve made and I carry it around like a trophy, like Dexter carries around his victims’ blood on slides. I use that blade to give myself a cut and it starts bleeding. Right away, it feels as though the pressure that has been building inside me ever since that confrontation with Puck is lifted. I feel free again.

~ Kady Hunt

She smells like spring and flowers and rain, even though it’s winter. Sometimes, he thinks he loves her so much that his mind is unable to distinguish between love and obsession. Which is worse?

~ Christy A. Campbell

The butterflies swirl again in Sera’s stomach. Perhaps they have brought along fireflies too, to light up her soul.

~ Christy A. Campbell

How would Elijah ever understand a life that is dark more than light? Or a shadow of someone who follows her around, and when she least expects it, taps her on the back and asks, where are you going, Seraphina?

~ Christy A. Campbell

He reflects on all the times he thought she wasn’t sure of her feelings for him, when perhaps she might’ve been taking a leisurely stroll across Elijah’s heart, leaving footprints behind that he’d never seen.

~ Christy A. Campbell

I’d felt this before, when my granddad was in the hospital before he died. We all camped out in the waiting room, eating our meals together, most of us sleeping in the chairs every night. Family from far-flung places would arrive at odd hours and we’d all stand and stretch, hug, get reacquainted, and pass the babies around.A faint, pale stream of beauty and joy flowed through the heavy sludge of fear and grief. It was kind of like those puddles of oil you see in parking lots that look ugly until the sun hits them and you see rainbows pulling together in the middle of the mess.And wasn’t that just how life usually felt—a confusing swirl of ugly and rainbow?

~ Laura Anderson Kurk

Sometimes, in the stillness of my room, my mom’s voice came to me, repeating things she’d said for months. Like, “My skin is melting off my face, isn’t it?” And, “My whole body feels dead from the crap they’re pouring into me. Do I look green to you?” And, “When I’m naked, I can see my heart beating.

~ Laura Anderson Kurk

It was an oddly satisfying idea to feel bereft as I left my mother this time. We only feel bereft when we’re deprived of something meaningful.

~ Laura Anderson Kurk

My mom was sitting at the kitchen table. She’d set her coffee down, making a noise that made me look her way. I’d begun to notice her less and less often, like her colors were fading and blending in with walls. She was shrinking. Or maybe her sphere of influence in the family was shrinking. My dad glanced at her, too, and then wrote something on a napkin. He slid it across the counter to me—Don’t worry. Come home in one piece. Have fun and act like a sixteen-year-old for a change.

~ Laura Anderson Kurk

With a damp palm, I turned the knob and cracked open the door. She was asleep in her freshly made bed. I can’t explain how relieved I felt for this simple mercy. She was here and safe on clean sheets.

~ Laura Anderson Kurk

I couldn’t stop crying because it was so intimate, in that way I always thought being physical with him would feel. If someone had walked in they might have thought Henry was barely touching me. I knew the truth of it.He was laying me open and bare to him and to God.There wasn’t a more intimate act. I would never recover from this.

~ Laura Anderson Kurk

New rules—we needed new rules. No one opens the main doors but me. No one leaves the property without me. No one goes outside without letting me know. I had these horrible images in my head of kids being restrained against their wills, of kids crying my name out, begging me to help them when I was powerless. Desperate times… Lord, my soul called out. Lord…somehow that’s as far as I could get. I didn’t have the words.

~ Laura Anderson Kurk

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

Camus and Henry waved to me from that muddy truck. They both wanted me to get over myself.So, this was me, getting over myself. And it was about time.

~ Laura Anderson Kurk

What I know about you, Henry,” he said. “Is that you, as big as you are, know how to walk gently on this earth.

~ Laura Anderson Kurk