Young Adult Quotes

I'm not very good at being alive. Sometimes I despair of ever mastering it, getting it right. When I'm old, perhaps.

~ Tanith Lee

He stabs his fingers through his drying hair and resumes his pacing. “You think I don’t know this went really fast? I didn’t plan for this to happen. Hell, I didn’t even know if you’d let me talk to you, much less be with you. But then you did and we did and…” He stops in the center of the room and stares at me, his shoulders sagging. “I figured out pretty quick that this is a forever thing for me. I think it has been from the very beginning.

~ Kate Avelynn

James is why I never left. I should have left.

~ Kate Avelynn

Two babies in little more than a year and a half. Knockout Jimmy was forced to give up boxing and take a job in the paper mill. It broke him, and in turn, he broke us all.

~ Kate Avelynn

Ben Franklin advises his grandson not to let even the American Revolution interrupt his studies, urging of young adulthood, This is the time of life in which you are to lay the foundations of your future improvement and of your importance among men. If this season is neglected, it will be like cutting off the spring from the year.

~ H.w. Brands

Your past comes with you no matter where you go.

~ Dale Peck

James “Knockout Jimmy” O’Brien, Granite Fall’s very own boxing legend—a title he held until a young groupie poked holes in the condom she made him wear “for protection.”My brother was born nine months later, fists already swinging.

~ Kate Avelynn

I feel his intense gaze skimming my face and force myself to look him in the eye. This time, when he leans closer, I know what he wants. He traces my jaw with his fingertips, then moves lower to my chin. My eyelids flutter closed when he tips my face up.Oh my God. Sam Donavon is going to kiss me. The forest holds its breath.I hold my breath.Our lips brush, light as eyelashes. His fingers trail back into my hair, tilting my head. Hot cinnamon dances across my mouth. I’m drowning.And then my name, roared at the top of familiar lungs, cracks the silent night.

~ Kate Avelynn

Selfish as this sounds, I meant what I said earlier,” he finally says.I try to remember what he said, but everything is kind of a blur. “Which part?” “The ‘I’m glad you came tonight’ part.”So I’m not imagining the nudging or the sparks or what I could have sworn was his thumb tracing circles on the back of my hand while we walked to his car. “Mmm. Well in that case, I meant what I said, too.”He kicks a rock I’m two steps from tripping over out of my path. “You said the potholes in Leslie’s driveway suck.

~ Kate Avelynn

He was talking. I tried not to think of how he looked and instead of what he was telling me. Once I accomplished that, my brain couldn’t get past the ‘running’ part. “I don’t run.” I walked the mile run at school. True story. I abhorred any kind of physical exercise. I wasn’t good at it. I was skinny, but I was soft; had absolutely no muscle mass at all. That’s the way I liked it. Who was he to try to change that, change me? I wouldn’t let him. No way, no how. One half of his mouth lifted. He seemed to be enjoying this a little too much. “You do now. You have to be fit, you have to be strong, Taryn, if you’re to stand any chance of surviving this. Come on, we’ll start with stretching.” He forced me to twist my body into unimaginable positions. I even had to touch my toes. The agony. Luke took pleasure from my pain; even laughing as I moaned and groaned through it all. Then, the worst came about. He. Made. Me. Run.

~ Lindy Zart

Who would want to be the prey in a world full of hunters?

~ Alexia Purdy

It wasn't premeditated. It was what needed to be done. So I did it.

~ Milly Silver

You show me a teenager who doesn’t like to be flattered and I’ll show you a teenager who’s got a steady source of sex.

~ Dale Peck

It had become their creation, and they all would know it.

~ Evan Meekins

The ability for anyone in our generation to self-amuse has sadly been bred out of our species.

~ Kim Askew

But eggshells were made to be broken, and slamming into a 100-story skyscraper at the speed of light would likely do the deed.

~ Maureen A. Miller

The unknown is scary the Unknown can also be exciting. Your life could change in an instant anytime. But sometimes, that change is the best thing that will ever happen to you.Maybe I don’t have to know what my fate is to know that everything will be okay. Maybe the not knowing is how we move forward. Wherever I’m headed, I know it’s exactly where I’m supposed to be.

~ Susane Colasanti

Ramon looked closely at the little guy as he ate. Maybe he's Jewish. I mean, if Sammy Davis Jr. could convert to Judaism, why not a chupacabra? We should name him Harry Mendelbaum.I held up my arms in protest. You're all racist. Now shut up. We'll call him Taco von Precious of Svenenstein. There, everybody h

~ Lish Mcbride

To know of the existence of evil, true evil that corrupted the world, had forever altered her heart and mind. If she had chosen a different path, she wouldn't have slept another night. Her head would have been restless as she thought only of the horrors that might be creeping outside her door, waiting to rend her flesh. She would not live a life as the hunted; she would be the hunter.

~ Andrea Cremer

The Lord of Rags and Tatters.

~ Megan Whalen Turner

Fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, lemme tell you. Those are big years. Everybody always thinks of it as a time of adolescence—just getting through to the real part of your life—but it's more than that. Sometimes your whole life happens in those years, and the rest of your life it's just the same story playing out with different characters. I could die tomorrow and have lived the main ups and downs of life. Pain. Loss. Love. And what you all so fondly refer to as wisdom. Wanna know the difference between adult wisdom and young adult wisdom? You have the ability to look back at your past and interpret it. I have the ability to look at my present and live it with my whole body.

~ Lidia Yuknavitch

Best friends make the worst enemies, they know all your secrets and how to hurt you the most.

~ Alyson Noel

Help me, Mikey, she wanted to say. I’m afraid. More afraid than you’d ever believe.’ And he’d take her hand and they’d fly across the rooftops and up into space and sit on some planet and watch a double sunrise or maybe a star being born or some other event that no human had ever seen, her head on his shoulder, his arm around her. And she’d tell him everything.

~ Jenny Downham

He may be stronger, but I'm not defenseless. He knows that, of coarse. That's why he's here. He wants me for what I can do after all.

~ Sophie Jordan

Not so long ago we were all a tightly knit group of friends. Too bad someone had ripped apart the stitches that held us together, unraveling the cozy blanket of our friendship and leaving just enough strands to hang ourselves with.

~ E.j. Stevens

Look,’ said Cyrus, raising his knife again and pointing it at her. ‘Give me one reason why we shouldn’t kill your boyfriend over there. Come on. The dark scowling face is reason enough in my book.’She could have sworn she heard the sound of Lucas’s eyes narrowing to slits.‘Come on, just one reason,’ Cyrus repeated, ‘and it better not include the words love, eternal or soul.

~ Sarah Alderson

I once knew a girl who was like a dying rainbow. Her colors were incomparable, her countenance a whirlwind of brilliance. As much as she shone, however, she faded into nothingness, at times so quickly that I was unsure whether she had existed at all.

~ Charity Santiago

Before long, everyone was giving him answers, and feeling a little superior, because it was really remarkable the number of things Chrestomanci seemed not to know. He had heard of Hitler, though he asked Brian to refresh his memory about him, but he had only the haziest notion about Gandhi or Einstein, and he had never heard of Walt Disney or reggae.

~ Diana Wynne Jones

No, it's okay. It was just … weird. No one has ever called me hot before.”“Really?” Trace frowned. “Well, that changes right now.” He ceased walking, stopping in the dead center of the pathway and reached for my hands. “Jade Cannon, you are totally hot!” Trace announced loudly, and people nearby stopped to stare at us after his outburst. I couldn't help but laugh.

~ Chelsea Lynn Charters

My heart, always so strong in the past, was like the fishnet stockings that clung to my legs—torn, shredded, and full of gaping holes.

~ E.j. Stevens

Being a spy was something like standing on the south shore fending off a hurricane with a $2 poncho and an umbrella.

~ Lynn Blackmar

I was so tired of this ceaseless, day-to-day tug-of-war between my hormones and my head, my vanity and my virtue. I felt very much as though I were caught in the middle of some dreadful battle in which taking a side of my own would mean certain misery in either case.

~ Emily Tomko

Love, really? We're vampires, not teenagers. Lust is for the weak.

~ Ashley Madau

Being shaken to death by a Hawaiian tourist look-alike was not how Arena imagined her death.

~ Lynn Blackmar

People who are different are considered ineffective. People who can’t hide their shortcomings are not considered a threat. A lot of spies rely on being unobtrusive, but we flat out flaunt the fact that we’re different, and those we try to get information from put us on an even lower level than the ones they don’t notice. They don’t believe we’re even capable of being a threat, and they misstep more than they might with someone they simply don’t know.

~ Lynn Blackmar

So as near as I could tell the end of the world began roughly about the time that Billy Carver’s butt rang about halfway through the War of 1812.

~ Steve Vernon

The room was two-tiered,its marble balconies filled with rams and water nymphs in fancydress; a kaleidoscope of colours swayed in time to the beat ofhypnotic music. A concerto of absent musicians, it played only inher mind. The numerous chandeliers with sculptured metal frameshung down from chains, with endless fireflies attached. At the farend stretched a grand staircase, dressed with a plush velvet carpetin deep cerise, and ceiling paintings edged with gold embosseddado rails clung to the walls.Then Eve honed in on herself and saw that she wore a crushedwhite taffeta A-line gown that fit her trim figure like a glove. Herbutterfly mask with floral patterns embroidered in red and goldsilk sat against her pale skin, her reflection like that of a porcelaindoll. A matching shawl rested softly on her shoulders. Everythingwas so beautiful that she almost totally lost herself in the mirror’sreflection.(little snippet from our book)

~ L. Wells

Saw a show on Discovery Channel that talked about how energy and matter can't be destroyed. It can only change and that got me thinking that maybe there is something more than just this life. Dying might just be a transformation of energy.

~ Joshua Jones

My first jailbreak began when a coarse-toothed mechanic’s file crashed through the window of the Deeper Harbour PoliceStation 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

But alas, the world is not a wish-granting factory.

~ John Green