Young Adult Authors

"I am being perfectly fucking civil."

"A secret is a strange thing. There are three kinds of secrets. One is the sort everyone knows about, the sort you need at least two people for. One to keep it. One to never know. The second is a harder kind of secret: one you keep from yourself. Every day, thousands of confessions are kept from their would-be confessors, none of these people knowing that their never-admitted secrets all boil down to the same three words: I am afraid. And then there is the third kind of secret, the most hidden kind. A secret no one knows about. Perhaps it was known once, but was taken to the grave. Or maybe it is a useless mystery, arcane and lonely, unfound because no one ever looked for it. Sometimes, some rare times, a secret stays undiscovered because it is something too big for the mind to hold. It is too strange, too vast, too terrifying to contemplate. All of us have secrets in our lives. We’re keepers or keptfrom, players or played. Secrets and cockroaches — that’s what will be left at the end of it all."

"Blue said, "I can't get in this car. Do you know what's happening behind me? I don't even want to look." Henry said, "How about you give me the finger and shout at me now and withdraw with your principles?" He smiled winningly and held up three fingers. He counted to two with devil horns. "This is incredibly unnecessary," Blue told him, but she could feel herself smiling. "Life's a show," he replied. He counted one with his middle finger, and then his face melted into exaggerated shock. Blue shouted, "Drop dead, you bastard!" "FINE!" Henry screamed back, with slightly more hysteria than the role required. He attempted to squeal out of the lot, stopped to take off the parking brake, and then limped out more sedately.""

"Once when Adam had still lived in the trailer park, he had been pushing the lawn mower around the straggly side yard when he realized that it was raining a mile away. He could smell it, the earthy scent of rain on dirt, but also the electric, restless smell of ozone. And he could see it: a hazy sheet of water blocking his view of the mountains. He could track the line of rain travelling across the vast dry field towards him. It was heavy and dark, and he knew he would get drenched if he stayed outside. It was coming from so far away that he had plenty of time to put the mower away and get under cover. Instead, though, he just stood there. he closed his eyes and let the storm soak him. That was this kiss."

"It was this,: the future hanging heavy in the air, and Henry starting a quiet, drunk conversation about whether or not Blue would like to travel to Venezuela with him. Blue replying softly that she would, she very much would, and Gansey hearing the longing in her voice like he was being undone, like his own feelings were unbearably mirrored. I cant come? Gansey asked. Yes, you can meet us there in a fancy plane, Henry said. Don't be fooled by his fancy hair, Blue interjected, Gansey would hike. And warmth filled the empty caverns in Gansey's heart. He felt known."

"It was not my finest moment," Henry said. "My car and I have since made amends." "His electric car," Gansey inserted with subtlety, in case Blue had missed the environmental ramifications. Blue narrowed her eyes at Gansey and then pointed out, "You could bike to Aglionby from here." Henry wagged a finger. "True, true. But it is important to practise safe bicycling, and they have not yet made a helmet to accommodate my hair."

"His feelings for Adam were an oil spill; he'd let them overflow and now there wasn't a damn place in the ocean that wouldn't catch fire if he dropped a match."

"Adam had turned down so many offers for help from Gansey. Money for school, money for food, money for rent. Pity and charity, Adam had thought. For so long, he'd wanted Gansey to see him as an equal, but it was possible that all this time, the only person who needed to see that was Adam. Now he could see that it wasn't charity Gansey was offering. It was just truth. And something else: friendship of the unshakable kind. Friendships you could swear on. That could be busted nearly to breaking and come stronger than before."

""Sorry," he said. "I was being sort of a dick." Noah replied, "We weren't going to say it." "I was," Blue said."

"She seemed to have neither sense of fullness nor taste, and would often combine foods in manners that struck Blue as problematic. She didn't believe in telling people how to live their lives (well, maybe a little), but it was hard to stand by and watch Gwenllian spread peanut butter on a cold hot dog."

""Where the hell is Ronan?" Gansey asked, echoing the words that thousands of humans had uttered since mankind developed speech."

"We are going so slow," Noah said, craning his neck to observe the inevitable queue behind them. "I think I just saw a tricycle pass us." "Rude."

""You guys have a death list?" Ronan broke in. "That is fucking dark. Am I on it?" "Some days, I wish," Blue said."

"Gansey asked, "Do you have time to run an errand with us? Do you have work? Homework?" "No homework. I got suspended," Blue replied. "Get the fuck out," Ronan said, but with admiration. "Sargent, you asshole." Blue reluctantly allowed him to bump fists with her."

"She turned to Gansey. "Blue," he warned, but his voice was chaotic. This close, his throat was scented with mint and wool sweater and vinyl car seat, and Gansey, just Gansey. She said, "I just want to pretend. I want to pretend that I could.""

"He was brother to a liar and brother to an angel, son of a dream and son of a dreamer."

"His second secret was Adam Parrish."

"Dying's a boring side effect."

""This is the lady I spoke to on the phone all those months ago, right? How small she is. Are you done growing?" "What!" Blue said. Gansey felt it was time to remove Malory from the terminal."

"As they moved through the old barn, Adam felt Ronan's eyes glance off him and away, his disinterest practised but incomplete. Adam wondered if anyone else noticed. Part of him wished they did and immediately felt bad, because it was vanity, really: See, Adam Parrish is wantable, worthy of a crush, not just by anyone, someone like Ronan, who could want Gansey or anyone else and chose Adam for his hungry eyes"

"Do you love him?" Maura asked curiously. "I'd rather not," Blue replied. "He has lots of negative qualities I can help you hone in on," her mother offered. "I'm already aware of them. Infinitely."

"I was pretty sure you’d be weird. But now that I’ve met you, I can honestly say you’re even weirder."

"These are hard times. The world hurts. We live in fear and forget to walk with hope. But hope has not forgotten you. So ask it to dinner. It's probably hungry and would appreciate the invitation."

"Marisol does a silly dance with Balder and the screw, one in each hand, so that nobody gets the idea that she takes tins — or anything else, for that matter — seriously. And just like that, something in the cosmos shifts. A butterfly flaps its wings in South America. Snow falls in Chicago. You give an idiot a stupid magic screw and it turns out to be a necessary part after all."

"In our travels, we have come across many equations — math for understanding the universe, for making music, for mapping stars, and also for tipping, which is important. Here is our favorite equation: Us plus Them equals All of Us. It is very simple math. Try it sometime. You probably won’t even need a pencil."

"The dark does not weep for itself because there is no light. Rather, it accepts that it is the dark. It is said that even the gods must die." He winks. "But not without one hell of a fight.”"

"People always think they know other people, but they don’t. Not really. I mean, maybe they know things about them, like they won’t eat doughnuts or they like action movies or whatever. But they don’t know what their friends do in their rooms alone at night or what happened to them when they were kids or if they feel fucked up and sad for no reason at all."

"You’ve been assigned an identity since birth. Then you spend the rest of your life walking around in it to see if it really fits. You try on all these different selves and abandon just as many. But really it’s about dismantling all that false armor, getting down to what’s real."

"I'm one of those people who has to write. If I don't write, I feel itchy and depressed and cranky. So everybody's glad when I write and stop complaining already."

"I have an artificial left eye. I lost my real eye in a car accident when I was eighteen. In fact, I had to have my entire face rebuilt because I smashed it up pretty good. It took six years and thirteen surgeries. However, I did have the pleasure of freezing a plastic eyeball in an ice cube, putting it in a friend's drink, ("Eyeball in your highball?") and watching him freak completely. Okay, so maybe that's not going down on my good karma record. But it sure was fun."

"I'm related to Davy Crockett on my mom's side. Honest."

"“Oh, hello," Dr. M says, shaking Balder's hand. "Wonderful costume. I'm a bit of a role player myself on the weekends. Tell me, where did you get the helmet?" "It was forged in the North, blessed by the hands of Odin, given to me by my mother, Frigg," Balder answers. "Lovely. I got mine on the Internet.”"

"My favorite word is "redemption." I like both its meaning and the sound. My least favorite word is "maybe." "Maybe" is almost always a "no" drawn out in cruel fashion."

"Balder holds up a completely blank rune. Wyrd. The beginning and the end. Fate. I don't know what that means, but it's not doing anything to uncreep me."

"My dad was a Presbyterian minister. Yes, I am one of those dreaded P.K.s — Preacher's Kids. Be afraid. Be very afraid…"

"[After discovering Soren's former home is abandoned] Then Twilight spoke, "Soren, they're gone. Maybe something happened to them. You shouldn't take it personally. Buck up now, old buddy." "Personally? What do you know, Twilight, that is personal about any family? You've never had a family. Remember, you're always telling us about how much you learned in your own orphan school of tough learning. You don't know the feel of a mother's down. You don't know what it's like to hear stories from a father, or to hear him sing. Do you know what a psalm is, Twilight? I bet you don't. Well, we Barn Owls know about psalms and books and the feeling of down." Twilight's feathers had ruffled up, spiky with ice crystals. He looked fearsome. "I'll tell you what I know, you miserable little owl. The whole world is my family. I know the softness of a fox's fur, and the strange green light that comes into their eyes during the spring moons. I know how to fish because I learned from an eagle. And when meat is scarce I know how to find the ripest part of a rotten tree and peck the juiciest bugs from it. I know plenty.""

"Gylfie turned to Digger and spoke, "Come with us, Digger." "But where is it you're going?" he asked. "To the Great Ga'Hoole Tree." "What?" said Digger, but before Twilight could answer, Streak broke in. "I've heard of that place, but isn't it just a story, a legend?" "To some it might be," Twilight said, and blinked at the eagle. But not to owls, thought Soren. To owls, he thought, it is a real place."

"I have redeemed myself by giving belief to the wings of the young. Blessed are those who believe, for indeed they shall fly."

"Oh, if only I were perfectly moon blinked [hypnotized]. If only I were..."

"Gylfie looked at Soren gravely. "That is why we must learn how to fly before the next newing." "But I won't be ready. I won't have enough feathers," Soren said. "Almost, though." "Almost? There's a difference, Gylfie, between almost and enough." "Yes. The difference is belief, Soren. Belief.""

"You can do it! You believe! Feel it in your gizzard. You are a creature of flight. Fly, my children. Fly!"

"Bye-bye," Auntie cooed, and waved a tattered wing. "Bye-bye, 12-8, you fool!"

""You just hatched out two weeks ago." Kludd turned to Soren, his younger brother. "What do you know about sisters?" Maybe, Soren thought to himself, they would be better than brothers."

"Once upon a very long time ago, in the time of Glaux, there was an order of knightly owls, from a kingdom called Ga'Hoole, who would rise up each night and perform noble deeds. They spoke no words but true ones, their purpose was to right all wrongs, to make strong the weak, mend the broken, vanquish the proud, and make powerless those who abused the frail. With hearts sublime they would take flight..."

""I don't really know what happened. I just fell out of the nest." But the second Soren said those words he felt a weird queasiness. He almost knew. He just couldn't quite remember, but he almost knew how it had happened, and he felt a mixture of dread and shame creep through him. He felt something terrible deep in his gizzard."

"Gylfie felt that the moment was right. "You are the last owl in the world that I would ever say lacked humility, 12-8. You are for my friend and myself a perfect example of humility. You are beyond humbleness! You are ..." Gylfie was madly searching for a word. What's she going to say next? Soren couldn't imagine. He had never seen such a demonstration of outrageous fawning. "You are subglaucious." 12-8 blinked at the word as did Soren, who had no idea what subglaucious meant. "We, my friend and I, only wish that we could serve in the eggorium and thus attain such humbleness as yourself." "Your words are kind, 25-2. I shall hope that they might encourage me in my continuing quest for humility while in service to a great cause." She wandered off looking a tad more moon blinked than before, if that was possible. "What in Glaux's name is subglaucious?" Soran said as soon as she was out of earshot. "No idea. I made it up.""

"[T]hat’s something Roth does extraordinarily well – explain the toughest parts of life. Love, loss, heartbreak, joy and faith."

"Veronica Roth has a very blunt and not-so-sugarcoated way of killing people off."

"“Do you know,” it says, “a zmora can tell the difference between dread and fear. A person fears what’s unknown, but they dread what’s known.”"

"“You need to calm down,” Ala says to him, her eyes closed. “I can’t concentrate with you scared like this, it’s like you’re waterboarding me with hot chocolate.”"