Ya Novels Quotes

In the whole history of my letters, of my liking boys, not once has a boy liked me back at the same time as I liked him. It was always me alone, longing after a boy, and that was fine, that was safe ~ Jenny Han

One of my biggest goals, especially with writing YA novels, is just to have people enjoy reading. ~ Lauren Conrad

A lot of my YA novels are about family problems. ~ Susan Beth Pfeffer

And against whom is this censorship directed? By way of answer, think back to the big subcultural debates of 2011 – debates about how gritty fantasy isn't really fantasy; how epic fantasy written from the female gaze isn't really fantasy; how women should stop complaining about sexism in comics because clearly, they just hate comics; how trying to incorporate non-Eurocentric settings into fantasy is just political correctness gone wrong and a betrayal of the genre's origins; how anyone who finds the portrayal of women and relationships in YA novels problematic really just wants to hate on the choices of female authors and readers; how aspiring authors and bloggers shouldn't post negative reviews online, because it could hurt their careers; how there's no homophobia in publishing houses, so the lack of gay YA protagonists can only be because the manuscripts that feature them are bad; how there's nothing problematic about lots of pretty dead girls on YA covers; how there's nothing wrong with SF getting called 'dystopia' when it's marketed to teenage girls, because girls don't read SF. Most these issues relate to fear of change in the genre, and to deeper social problems like sexism and racism; but they are also about criticism, and the freedom of readers, bloggers and authors alike to critique SFF and YA novels without a backlash that declares them heretical for doing so.


It's not enough any more to tiptoe around the issues that matter, refusing to name the wor ~ Foz Meadows

I watch a lot of teen TV and read a lot of YA novels. I also talk to teens whenever I can. There are cultural differences between when I was a teen and now, but emotions - anger, angst, love - are the same. ~ Sarah Mlynowski

Crazy girls did this, girls who walked like zombies through YA novels.
But.
Trixie felt the sting of the skin as it split, the sweet welling rise of blood.
It hurt, though not as much as everything else idd. ~ Jodi Picoult

Cat Rambo: Where do you think the perennial debate between what is literary fiction and what is genre is sited?

Norman Spinrad: I think it's a load of crap. See my latest column in Asimov's, particularly re The Road by Cormac McCarthy. I detest the whole concept of genre. A piece of fiction is either a good story well told or it isn't. The supposed dichotomy between "literary fiction" and "popular fiction" is ridiculous. Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Mailer, did not have serious literary intent? As writers of serious literary intent, they didn't want to be "popular," meaning sell a lot of books? They wanted to be unpopular and have terrible sales figures to prove they were "serious"?

I say this is bullshit and I say the hell with it. "Genre," if it means anything at all, is a restrictive commercial requirement. "Westerns" must be set in the Old West. "Mysteries" must have a detective solving a crime, usually murder. "Nurse Novels" must have a nurse. And so forth.

In the strictly literary sense, neither science fiction nor fantasy are "genres." They are anti-genres. They can be set anywhere and anywhen except in the mimetic here and now or a real historical period. They are the liberation of fiction from the constraints of "genre" in an absolute literary sense. ~ Norman Spinrad

With the novels, I usually start from something in my own life that I can't resolve, so I turn it into a metaphor and for months or sometimes years I'll exhaust all of my emotional reaction to this issue by making it enormous on the page. ~ Chuck Palahniuk

The painter paints, the musician makes music, the novelist writes novels. But I believe that we all have some influence, not because of the fact that one is an artist, but because we are citizens. As citizens, we all have an obligation to intervene and become involved, it's the citizen who changes things. I can't imagine myself outside any kind of social or political involvement. ~ Jose Saramago

I'd never really considered doing young-adult novels, but one of the things that a friend pointed out to me is that I've actually had a teenage character in almost every adult novel that I've written. ~ Michelle Gagnon

I went into journalism in a grandiose way. I thought maybe I'd do a little journalism whilst I write the great novel of all time you see
one has to keep oneself afloat. ~ Neal Ascherson

We always watched horror movies. As a child I remember sitting up into the early hours of the morning watching horror movies with my father. I still watch horror movies and read horror novels because they remind me of "home." Nostalgia, you could say. ~ Damien Echols

I was like Elvis "The Pelvis" Presley on Ed Sullivan, I tells ya, punished for the crime of being sexy. (him on the telly , me in a dingy alley ... any analogy will break down under scrutiny.) ~ Russell Brand

Light bursts behind my closed eyes, so intensely I nearly hear the popping sound. It's my brain melting, or my world ending, or maybe we've just been hit by a meteor and this is the rapture and I'm given one last perfect moment before I'm sent to purgatory and he;s sent somewhere much, much better.
It isn't his first kiss - I know that - but it's his first real one. ~ Christina Lauren

I've never written a movie, I'm not in the movie business. I go out to L.A. and I'm like everyone else wandering around in a daze hoping I see movie stars. I write the novels that the movies are based on, and that feels like enough of a job for me. ~ Justin Cronin

Tangled onto the shuttle, we were being woven back and forth to create the same tapestry of despair and heartbreak and loss. It was so much
bigger than I could see before, and all I had done was stand at the centre of the web and feed it my anger and frustration and jealousy. ~ J.A. Ironside

My crime novels are highly structured. I never start out with a dead body. I start with an impossible scenario. Opening questions should be mysterious, weird, intriguing, and contain the seeds of the solution. The structure has to be meticulous - I'm a structure freak. ~ Sophie Hannah

I was writing novels at eight. It was a science fiction epic, which went by the unimprovable title of 'Another Kind of Warrior.' I'd write it beginning to end, but when I'd finished it, I was another year older. The quality of writing and thought changed radically, so I'd start it again. I re-wrote that same book until I was 16. ~ Neil Cross

It did not take long after the rise of the commercial printing press before someone figured out that erotic novels were a good idea ... It took people another 150 years to even think of the scientific journal. ~ Clay Shirky

Courage can be displayed in many forms, my lord,' I said gently. 'Sometimes it's evident in the knight charging forward with the lance on his steed. But perhaps it can also take the form of a head bowed before the enemy. ~ Jody Hedlund

See, ya are what ya are in this world. That's either one of two things: Either you're somebody, or you ain't nobody. ~ Frank Lucas

The French poet Mallarmé claimed that "everything in the world exists to end up in a book," and if that's true, and that even every boy is a book, Federico was undoubtedly created by the pen of Keats or some other tormented Romantic poet; while Matteo was pure passion, like Shakespeare's Romeo: spontaneous, intense, and impetuously real. ~ Mirella Muffarotto

Streamline Your Focus Instead of Jumping From Unfinished Project to Unfinished Project

Although it seems contradictory, anxiety-related perfectionism can cause people to persist too long on some tasks and leave other projects unfinished. Perfectionists who are intolerant of uncertainty often jump from project to project. They might start multiple business plans, grant proposals, job applications, movie scripts, stand-up routines, craft projects, or novels, and not finish any of them. They may sour quickly on an idea when their self-doubt starts to creep in rather than stay with the idea long enough to realistically judge it's potential.
If you bounce from idea to idea, it could very well be because it's hard for you to tolerate your uncertainty about whether the idea you're working on is going to pan out. If you have a habit of not finishing things, you're likely to be better off sticking with a project and finishing it, instead of jumping to another project when you start to feel unsure.
To help you be less tempted to jump around, reduce your exposure to excessive information and alternatives. ~ Alice Boyes

The loss, the harshness, the unpredictability of the Australian country. Can I deal with this? Maybe only with Aiden by my side. What would that life be like? The pleasure, the satisfaction, the love. ~ Stella Knights

There was no way I would pair up with this guy - the epitome of a privileged and entitled beefcake. He was everything I loathed rolled up into a tight, luscious, muscular, heady, and quixotically alluring package. My social phobias aside, I needed alone time with Ronan like a car needed a swim in the ocean. ~ L. H. Cosway

I hope you know that when you're happy, or sad, or joyful, when you're melancholy on spring days, or rainy nights, or autumn evenings, I'd be right there with you, watching the leaves change. And during cold winters by the popping and cracking of a chimney fire, as the snow powders the limbs of the cedars, I'd be there, with you, lying beside you when you wake up and when you go to sleep. And I'd never abandon you. I'd be there for you when you need me. And starting now, I'll be there for you as long as my time on earth shall last. All you ever have to do is tell me what you want or need and I'll provide that for you, if it's within my power. I swear I'll love you the rest of my life. ~ James Russell Lingerfelt

Everything about this place reminded me of the fantasy novels that I'd read when I was little. I'd always wanted to be a part of them, and now it looked like my wish had been granted.
But it would still be a long time until this place felt like home. ~ Aprille Legacy

Literature is the extant body of written art. All novels belong to it.
The value judgement concealed in distinguishing one novel as literature and another as genre vanishes with the distinction.
Every readable novel can give true pleasure. Every novel read by choice is read because it gives true pleasure.
Literature consists of many genres, including mystery, science fiction, fantasy, naturalism, realism, magical realism, graphic, erotic, experimental, psychological, social, political, historical, bildungsroman, romance, western, army life, young adult, thriller, etc., etc…. and the proliferating cross-species and subgenres such as erotic Regency, noir police procedural, or historical thriller with zombies.
Some of these categories are descriptive, some are maintained largely as marketing devices. Some are old, some new, some ephemeral.
Genres exist, forms and types and kinds of fiction exist and need to be understood: but no genre is inherently, categorically superior or inferior.

(Hypothesis on Literature vs. Genre) ~ Ursula K. Le Guin

Yes, your blondness. What?
"Did you mail off all your applications?"
"I did as ordered, Your Majesty."
"Are you going to tell me where you applied?"
"University of None Ya. University of Mind Your Own. University of Not-tellin'. Big Secret College. And St. Stay-out-of-it Technical College. ~ Tiffany Reisz

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

That's how the past came back... not with the same characters, like in novels, but with new ones that trigger the memory of fears that haven't been expunged. And that was very dangerous. I mustn't try to forget the past, as I had thought[...]; instead I should remember it all, so I could keep it under control and use it to strengthen myself against the new experiences that surely lay in wait. ~ Goliarda Sapienza

Most - and I mean maybe 99% or more - graphic novels are simply fat comicbooks. The term is a bogus, cocked-up concept some marketing whizkid conceived to get comics on the shelves of bookstores. ~ Jim Steranko

Besides it's not as though the prisoner can truly die, any more than a character in a novel can. You can always flip back to the first page, can't you? ~ Django Wexler

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

I sailed a bit as a child, but it wasn't until I was around 40, when I was halfway through Patrick O'Brian's 'Master and Commander' novels, that I had the sudden epiphany that I had to go sail on a square-rig ship. ~ Billy Campbell

If only words hadn't eluded me today, if only I yelled back at him: I do get it! I get that as long as you live no one will ever love you as much as I do - I have a heart so I can give it to you alone! That's exactly the way I feel - but unfortunately, people don't talk like that outside of Victorian novels. ~ Jandy Nelson

In an even wilder part of the river's jungle of cane and gum and pin oak, there is an Indian mound. Aboriginal, it rises profoundly and darkly enigmatic, the only elevation of any kind in the wild, flat jungle of river bottom. Even to some of us - children though we were, yet we were descended to literate, town-bred people - it possessed inferences of secret and violent blood, of savage and sudden destruction, as though the yells and hatchets we associated with Indians through the hidden and seceret dime novels which we passed among ourselves were but trivial and momentary manifestations of what dark power still dwelled or lurked there, sinister, a little sardonic, like a dark and nameless beast lightly and lazily slumbering with bloody jaws ... ~ William Faulkner

Since the road to publication is usually so arduous, meandering and fraught with unexpected twists, writers have ample time to compose (in their heads or on fettuccini-stained restaurant napkins) dissertation-length monologues befitting that of a Shakespearean lead character, during which they describe - in complex, paragraph-long sentences - how exceedingly indebted they are to everyone they've ever met, read a book by or chatted about "Motivation" with online (in their entire lives) for the help given in the writing, acquisition, printing and distribution of their debut novels. ~ Marilyn Brant

Renia, tell me: does the thought of dying scare you?'
He asked softly, and with such concern in his voice, that it all welled up in her at once and caught her by surprise.
'Yes.' Her voice broke, and the tears came. She could not stop them. 'Is that what I must do, to save them? ~ Helen Bell

Did I mention how cute you look in my clothes?"
Blushing I just look at what I'm wearing and laugh.
"Chicks Dig me? And Sponge Bob boxers?"
"Chicks do dig me! And Sponge Bob is a great cartoon in your world. ~ Sara Daniell

Maybe that's what living is--recognizing the marvels and oddities around you. ~ S.K. Ali

People listening to songs are like people reading novels: for a few minutes, for a few hours, someone else gets to come in and hijack that part of your brain that's always thinking. A good book or song kidnaps your interior voice and does all the driving. With the artist in charge you're free for a little while to leave your body and be someone else. ~ Douglas Coupland

Sometimes novels are considered 'important' in the way medicine is - they taste terrible and are difficult to get down your throat, but are good for you. ~ Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Eliot was scornful of idle women readers who imagined themselves the heroines of French novels, and of self-regarding folk who saw themselves in the most admirable character in a novel, and she hoped for more nuanced engagement from her own readers. Even so, all readers make books over in their own image, and according to their own experience. ~ Rebecca Mead

In Wonderland, the madder something is, the better it works," the Cheshire cat said. "Which is of course, why you fit in very well. ~ Melanie Karsak

Because, hey, nothing says, "I wanna date ya," like grounds for a restraining order. ~ J.R. Ward

He kissed her and Ruby wanted to say, "To hell with white dresses and marriage."
-Ruby Vasquez, Ruby Ink ~ L.J. Wilson

I believe that people should write biographies only about people they love, or understand, or both. Novels, on the other hand, are often better if they're about people the writer doesn't like very much. ~ Penelope Fitzgerald

Writers remember everything ... especially the hurts. Strip a writer to the buff, point to the scars, and he'll tell you the story of each small one. From the big ones you get novels. A little talent is a nice thing to have if you want to be a writer, but the only real requirement is the ability to remember the story of every scar.
Art consists of the persistence of memory. ~ Stephen King

Did I call them Laurel and Hardy? I meant sodding Romeo and Juliet. This is flirting, á la Gestapo underlings:

She: Oh, you are so strong and manly, M'sieur Thibaut. These knots you tie are so secure.

He: That is nothing. Look, I pull them so tight you cannot undo them. Try.

She: It is true, I cannot! Oh, pull them tighter!

He: Chérie, your wish is my command.

It is my ankles, not hers, which he is binding so tightly and with such masculine charm.

She: I shall have to call you in tomorrow morning as well, to do this task for me.

He: You must cross the cords, so, and knot them behind -

Me: Squeak! Squeak!

She: Shut up and write, ya wee skrikin' Scots piece o' shite.

Well, no, she did not use those exact words. But you get the idea. ~ Elizabeth Wein

It's okay to be confused and scared. But ya know what? Everything is going to get better soon. I'm going to take care of you just like I always have."
"No."
I flash her a grin, hoping it'll win her over like it used to.
"Trust me, you really do like me. I know you don't know that right now, but you're crazy about me. ~ Carian Cole

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