64 Young Adult Fiction Quotes

In the vibrant world of young adult fiction, words hold the power to transport us to new realms, invoke deep emotions, and resonate with our own experiences. From timeless stories that accompany us through life’s pivotal moments to recent narratives that challenge and inspire, young adult fiction has consistently offered profound insights and memorable lines. In this article, we've compiled a curated list of the top 64 quotes from young adult novels, capturing the essence of adventure, love, and self-discovery. Whether you're a longtime fan of YA literature or just beginning your journey into this compelling genre, these quotes are sure to spark reflection and kindle your imagination.

1. “Friends are the family you choose (~ Nin/Ithilnin, Elven rogue).” - Jess C. Scott

2. “Let the spirits guide you, but never let them take you.” - E.J. Stevens

3. “Rule number 2 - don't listen to me!" Arriane laughed, "I'm certifiably insane!” - Lauren Kate

4. “Here's one of the things I learned that morning: if you cross a line and nothing happens, the line loses meaning. It's like that old riddle about a tree falling in a forest, and whether it makes a sound if there's no one around to hear it. You keep drawing a line farther and farther away, crossing it every time. That's how people end up stepping off the edge of the earth. You'd be surprised at how easy it is to bust out of orbit, to spin out to a place where no one can touch you. To lose yourself--to get lost. Or maybe you wouldn't be surprised. Maybe some of you already know. To those people, I can only say: I'm sorry.” - Lauren Oliver

5. “It's not my fault I can't be like you, okay? I don't get up in the morning thinking the world is one big, shiny, happy place, okay? That's just not how I work. I don't think I can be fixed.” - Lauren Oliver

6. “This is what happens when you try to help people. You get screwed.” - Lauren Oliver

7. “And now I realize Lindsay's not fearless. She's terrified. She's terrified that people will find out she's faking, bullshitting her way through life, pretending to have everything together when really she's just floundering like the rest of us. Lindsay, who will bite at you if you even look in her direction the wrong way, like on of those tiny attack dogs that are always barking and snapping in the air before they're jerked backward on the chains that keep them in one place.” - Lauren Oliver

8. “When our eyes made contact it was like being slapped, I just wanted to recoil” - Kate Le Vann

9. “I have never been reduced to begging somebody to leave me alone, but in your case I’ll make an exception.” - Tom Upton

10. “Mr. Freeman: You are getting better at this, but it's not good enough. This looks like a tree,but it is an average, ordinary, everyday, boring tree. Breathe life into it. Make it bend - trees are flexible, so they don't snap. Scar it, give it a twisted branch - perfect trees don't exist. Nothing is perfect. Flaws are interesting. Be the tree.” - Laurie Halse Anderson

11. “For a moment, I’m captivated. He’s seducing me with his eyes. A nervous flutter swims through my stomach. I can feel my heartbeat in my throat. Pounding. Constricting. I swallow hard.” - Lauren Hammond

12. “I knew that she couldn’t hear me if she was there. But the sound was enough to grab me, to hold me to hope, and with desperation that I’d never known before I knew that I must find my way back to her.” - Shawn Kirsten Maravel

13. “Imagine," she said, after registering, "a whole city of gorgeous Italian guys. They can say anything to me, and it'll be sexy." "You'll be so easy," Rashmi said. "Would you like-ah to order-ah the spa-ghe-tti? 'Oh, do me, Marco!” - Stephanie Perkins

14. “All that we know, soon shall we abandon. As time will lend itself. Eyes know only what they see. But brave hearts beat on with belief.” - Nathalie M. Leblanc

15. “I work in a restaurant in an airport in Taiwan. I am eighteen years old and I don’t like my job because everyone gets on planes and leaves. And I want to leave too.” - Kerem Mermutlu

16. “Then why don't I tell on him?If they don't, why don't I?Because.Because I am safe this way,silent unnoticed.” - Thalia Chaltas

17. “You make obstacle courses and hurricanes, I make T-shirt slogans.” - Kimberly Sabatini

18. “Why don't you check out those teenagers in the middle row? They've been going at it like dogs in heat ever since the previews. They're probably both werewolves. And even if they aren't, you should throw them out on principle alone.” - Rusty Fischer

19. “Just try it,” he murmurs, reaching over to cover my hand gently.And I think, Whoa, that’s never happened before!Then: Is he just doing that because he thinks Wyatt is interested?And, finally, this: Who the hell cares?!” - Rusty Fischer

20. “I wonder where love really is. Good feelings. Happiness. They're someplace, I know. I feel that. But without Father and Mother, how do I get there?” - Susan Shaw

21. “My mother always said that I was born out of a bottle of vinegar instead of born from a womb and that she and my father bathed me in sugar for three days to wash it off. I try to behave, but I always go back to the vinegar.” - Maggie Stiefvater

22. “Too many adults wish to 'protect' teenagers when they should be stimulating them to read of life as it is lived.” - Margaret A. Edwards

23. “Some people are born to weirdness,” Jerry said, “and others have weirdness thrust upon them.” - Tom Upton

24. “You can always tell the heart of man by what he do, and by what he don't do...” - Steven J. Carroll

25. “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

26. “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

27. “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

28. “If we truly detach from our childhood and abandon our inherent romanticism, then we shred any bit of humanity left in us.” - Evan Meekins

29. “There is no right or wrong, only what we believe is more right or more wrong” - Evan Meekins

30. “War was easy. The hard part was cleaning up afterward.” - Evan Meekins

31. “With the threat of them being potential spies or saboteurs, nobody will argue against our actions, and history itself will vindicate us.” - Evan Meekins

32. “a true leader must be able to command with an iron fist, not just a humble heart.” - Evan Meekins

33. “We must kill the guard before we can enter the palace.” - Evan Meekins

34. “Sometimes, reality is the illusion, and the truth only visible where our eyes can’t see.”- Lady Lalaigne” - Jeanine Henning

35. “I don’t know who those other people are and what they did to you, but I’m not one of them,” I whispered, on the verge of tears. (Molly)“You are. You just don’t know yet.” (Victor)” - A.B.Whelan

36. “A book is a wonderful present. Though it may grow worn, it will never grow old.” - Jane Yolen

37. “Hey, when you love a woman, and when she’s this crazy in love with you, you’ve got to do whatever she says, man.” - Arby Robbins

38. “I just read this great quote by Junot Diaz, he was talking about true intimacy, and he was saying that it was the willingness to be vulnerable and to be found out. That’s what I felt that YA did. It wasn't pretentious, and it wasn’t hiding its heart. It wanted to be found out...It felt like those moments when you go to a party and you're standing around for a long time, going, I don't fit in here, what am I going to talk to these people about? And everybody's getting drunk, and then you find this one person, and you end up sitting in some corner talking about all these arcane things.And then before you know it you're having a conversation about the meaning of life and it's four o’clock in the morning. That kind of feeling, that kind of intimacy — I felt like that's what I got from YA.” - Libba Bray

39. “But when you don't follow them up with any action, they're completely pointless. They're just sounds and syllables. But they mean absolutely nothing.” - J. Sterling

40. “Either I’ve got a wart on my nose they find curious, or I’ve grown a tail, Albie Merani muttered to himself. Just then he thought. I’d better get a move on, got work to do. He hurried across to some stairs, heading down deeper into station, then followed the signs to the pod station.” - Rw Rivers

41. “I woke with sweat beading across my forehead and my hands balled into fists clutching the sheet over my eyes. The dreams. They were back. Haunting me relentlessly. I thought they were gone... I should've known better. (Rayne)” - Kimberly Brockman

42. “[Reggie] had a way of picking the bad ideas, which is why we should’ve just said no.(from GAMELAND Episode 1: Deep into the Game)” - Saul Tanpepper

43. “Boys don’t gossip.”“Pah! You don’t know us as well as you think.”This was a disturbing prospect.” - Jennifer Echols

44. “I realise it’s going to happen. This girl of my dreams, this girl who is more like me than anyone I’ve ever met, wants to kiss me.” - Simone Elkeles

45. “What are you boys doing?” she asks, as if we’re still little kids messing around.“Arguin’,” Carlos says matter-of-factly.” - Simone Elkeles

46. “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

47. “What’s with all those tattoos? Makes you look like a hooligan.”“I suspect I am a hooligan.” - Simone Elkeles

48. “Carlos, are we in complete understanding with each other?”“Yeah,” I say. “As long as it’s not in your house and you don’t know about it, you’re okay with us messin’ around.”“I know you’re joking with me. You are joking with me, aren’t you?”“Maybe.” - Simone Elkeles

49. “When they’re together, the world could fall apart around them and they’d never notice or care as long as they have each other.About Alex and Brittany.” - Simone Elkeles

50. “You look like a hot tamale.”“That’s not really a compliment.” - Simone Elkeles

51. “Listen, I don’t know what the hell happened between you and Marco. To be honest I don’t really want to know, ’cause if I did I’d probably want to kick the shit outta him.”“I don’t need you to protect me.”“What if I want to?” - Simone Elkeles

52. “This angered me. “Nothing has changed!?!?” I screamed at him. I was furious with him. He had duped me. “Your a mermaid! Your a freak!” Calling him a freak hurt his feelings. “I am the same boy you fell in love with. I can't help who I was born as, but that doesn't affect the boy in which I want to be.”“And what is that?” I asked, really emotional right now. “A boy who wants to be given the chance to love you.” With these tender words, I instantly ran into his arms. “Oh Trysten, I don't care who you are, or what you can become, but I love you for loving me.” - Keira D. Skye

53. “Nico looked so devilishly handsome under the spilling glow of the moon.” - Keira D. Skye

54. “Her heart fluttered. It had only been a few hours, but it felt like a lifetime since she saw him last. She seriously felt addicted to that boy.” - Julia Crane

55. “There is a part of me that no one ever sees.I hide behind a mask of heavy make-up and ever-changing hair and clothing. I try to reinvent myself. It doesn’t work. There are times when I am bone-crushingly sad. I just want to curl into a ball and hide from the rest of the world. But, I plaster on a smile and play the game for my family and friends. They call me a free spirit.I wish I were free. I feel like I am imprisoned by my own mind.” - Julia Crane

56. “Every moment of our lives we make choices. Most we don’t even know we’re making, they’re so dull or routine or automatic. Some are beyond explanation—like my mom choosing Wyatt’s memory over Dad and me.” - Laura Anderson Kurk

57. “I smiled at him. Not even Wyatt would have known how to be this honorable when talking about a girl that had hurt him.” - Laura Anderson Kurk

58. “He carried her over the Owl Creek mountain range without stopping,” he said, quietly this time. “He carried her until he reached one of the hot springs around what became Chapin, and then he walked into the water with her and held her there for three days. He had about given up when she opened her eyes and whispered his name.” - Laura Anderson Kurk

59. “Here was what I wanted to happen when I walked through the door after my first real date and my first ever kiss. I wanted my mom to say, “Dear God, Meg, you’re glowing. Sit and tell me about this boy. He let you borrow his jacket? That’s so adorable.” Instead, I came off the high of that day by writing a letter to my dead brother and doing yoga between my twin beds, trying to forget my absent mother.” - Laura Anderson Kurk

60. “I finally understood why so much monkey business happened in the backs of buses. Put us in close proximity, with wheels spinning under us, and nothing to do but wait, we’re going to start thinking of lovely uses for our bodies. I don’t care who you are.” - Laura Anderson Kurk

61. “We bumped into other silent lines of kids going in the same direction. We looked like we were much younger and our lines were headed to the cafeteria or recess or the carpool line. Or it could’ve been a fire drill. Except for the stone-faced police officers weaving between us with rifles.” - Laura Anderson Kurk

62. “He ran his hand from my wrist up to the crook of my elbow and then to my shoulder. “When I was a little kid, my dad would come to my room at night to say a prayer with me. He used to say, ‘Lord, We know there’s a little girl out there who’s meant for Henry. Please protect her and raise her up right.’” His voice changed to something slower and more country when he mimicked his dad. He smiled at the memory, and then he put his mouth near my ear and whispered. “You were that little girl.” - Laura Anderson Kurk

63. “What is a monster? Something that grows hair all over and howls? Could be. But the real monster is within, and when it comes out, it’s as fugly as you see it, or as it lets you see it.” - John Vamvas Olga Montes

64. “All you need is one thought and one word. When you learn how to connect them, you can do anything you like.” - Jennifer Loiske