51 Beautiful YA Book Quotes To Inspire and Motivate Your Life
There are some quotes from YA books we’re all familiar with. There are the short YA book quotes which become iconic with specific books or cultural moments—think “Okay? Okay,” from John Green’s The Fault In Our Stars or “May the odds be ever in your favor” from Suzanne Collins’s The Hunger Games or even “Stay Gold, Ponyboy” from S.E. Hinton’s The Outsiders. But there is a whole world of YA book quotes out there, and even for readers who aren’t familiar with YA fiction, these YA book quotes will inspire, encourage, and motivate you to live your best life. All of these quotes are from YA books, rather than quotes from speeches, essays, or other non-book outlets by young adult authors.
Find below 51 YA book quotes in the categories of relationships, bravery, self-acceptance, and more. And, as always, feel free to add your own favorite YA book quotes in the comments. Let’s make this a collection of great words from the world of young adult literature.
YA Book Quotes About Love, Relationships, and People
1. “If you have two friends in your lifetime, you’re lucky. If you have one good friend, you’re more than lucky.” —from That Was Then, This Is Now by S.E. Hinton
2. “You may be born into a family, but you walk into friendships. Some you’ll discover you should put behind you. Others are worth every risk.” —from They Both Die At The End by Adam Silvera
3. “People really are like houses with vast rooms and tiny windows. And maybe it’s a good thing, the way we never stop surprising each other.” —from Simon Vs. The Homo Sapiens Agenda by Becky Albertalli
4. “I shiver, thinking how easy it is to be totally wrong about people—to see one tiny part of them and confuse it for the whole, to see the cause and think it’s the effect or vice versa.” —from Before I Fall by Lauren Oliver
5. “I think that maybe forgiveness is like change—it comes in small steps.” —from The Adoration of Jenna Fox by Mary E. Pearson
6. “Even in its first faint traces, love could alter a landscape. It wrote unimagined stories and made the most beautiful, forbidding places.” —from Wild Beauty by Anna-Marie McLemore
7. “I am coming to terms with the fact that loving someone requires a leap of faith, and that a soft landing is never guaranteed.” —from This Lullaby by Sarah Dessen
8. “Sometimes, when people get treated as less than human, the best way to help them feel better is to simply treat them as human. Not as victims. Just you as you.” —from All American Boys by Jason Reynolds and Brendan Kiely
YA Book Quotes On Speaking Up and Using Your Voice
9. “When people don’t express themselves, they die one piece at a time.You’d be shocked at how many adults are really dead inside—walking through their days with no idea who they are, just waiting for a heart attack or cancer or a Mack truck to come along and finish the job. It’s the saddest thing I know.” —from Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson
10. “Books are easily destroyed. But words will live as long as people can remember them.” —from Ignite Me by Tahereh Mafi
11. “It doesn’t matter how big the body, it’s what you do with it.” —from The Chocolate War by Robert Cormier
12. “If you want to rebel, rebel from inside the system. That’s much more powerful than rebelling outside the system.” —from Legend by Marie Lu
13. “We who have means and a voice must use them to help those who have neither.” —from These Shallow Graves by Jennifer Donnelly
14. “Hope can be a powerful force. Maybe there’s no actual magic in it, but when you know what you hope for most and hold it like a light within you, you can make things happen, almost like magic.” —from Daughter of Smoke and Bone by Laini Taylor
15. “The real courage is in living and suffering for what you believe.” —from Eragon by Christopher Paolini
16. “I feel like I need to speak out, because if no one speaks out, if no one says, this is me, this is what I believe in, and this is why I’m different, and this is why that’s okay, then what’s the point? What’s the point of living in this beautiful, great melting pot where everyone can dare be anything they want to be?” —from When Dimple Met Rishi by Sandhya Menon
YA Book Quotes On Fear and Strength
17. “Brave doesn’t mean you’re not scared. It means you go on even though you’re scared.” —from The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas
18. “Making a decision isn’t about knowing every potential consequence. It’s about knowing what you want and chasing a path that takes you in that direction” —from Huntress by Malinda Lo
19. “The funny thing about armor is that it doesn’t just keep other people out. It keeps us in. We build it up around us, not realizing that we’re trapping ourselves.” —from The Unbound by Victoria Schwab
20. “Each of us must confront our own fears, must come face to face with them. How we handle our fears will determine where we go with the rest of our lives. To experience adventure or to be limited by the fear of it.” —from Tiger Eyes by Judy Blume
21. “We can’t know what’s going to happen. We can just try to figure it out as we go along.” —from Amy and Roger’s Epic Detour by Morgan Matson
22. “Fear is only your enemy if you allow it to be.” —from An Ember in the Ashes by Sabaa Tahir
23. “Fear doesn’t shut you down; it wakes you up” —from Divergent by Veronica Roth
24. “I’ve seen most of what there is to be afraid of in this world, and to tell you the truth, the worst of them are the ones that make you afraid in the
light. The things that your eyes see plainly and can’t forget are worse than huddled black figures left to the imagination. Imagination has a poor memory; it slinks away and goes blurry. Eyes remember for much longer.” —from Anna Dressed in Blood by Kendare Blake
YA Book Quotes On Being Yourself and Believing In Yourself
25. “We are, largely, who we remember ourselves to be. That’s why habits are so hard to break. If we know ourselves to be liars, we expect not to tell the truth. If we think of ourselves as honest, we try harder.” —from White Cat by Holly Black
26. “My life is not packaged,
Not tidy. There are leftover strands and jagged
Edges that cut even my friends.” —from Street Love by Walter Dean Myers
27. “What is the point of being alive if you don’t at least try to do something remarkable?” —from An Abundance of Katherines by John Green
28. “Just because you can’t experience everything doesn’t mean you shouldn’t experience anything.” —from Everything, Everything by Nicola Yoon
29. “Time comes to us softly, slowly. It sits beside us for a while. Then, long before we are ready, it moves on.” —from If You Come Softly by Jacqueline Woodson
30. “The measure of a man is not how much he suffers in the test, but how he comes out at the end.” —from UnWholly by Neal Schusterman
31. “I think you gotta be who you want to be until you feel like you are whoever it is you’re trying to become. Sometimes half of doing something is pretending that you can.” —from Dumplin‘ by Julie Murphy
32. “Words are how others define us, but we can define ourselves any way we choose.” —from We Are The Ants by Shaun David Hutchinson
33. “I believed, and still believe, that you can build your dreams brick by brick. That you can accomplish anything with persistence.” —from I Believe In A Thing Called Love by Maurene Goo
34. “Sometimes the best way to find out what you’re supposed to do is by doing the thing you’re not supposed to do.” —from Just One Day by Gayle Forman
35. “Take care not to listen to anyone who tells you what you can and can’t be in life.” —from The Girl Who Could Silence The Wind by Meg Medina
Funny Quotes From YA Books
36. “You should eat a waffle. You can’t be sad if you eat a waffle” —from ttfn by Lauren Myracle
37. “Do you ever think if people heard our conversations they’d lock us up?” —from Jeremy Fink and The Meaning of Life by Wendy Mass
38. “What makes big boobs and perkiness so attractive to boys? I mean, really. Two round, mounds of fat and a fake smile. Yeah, winning attributes.” —from Oh My Goth by Gena Showalter
39. “Ah coffee. The sweet balm by which we shall accomplish today’s tasks.” —from Ironside by Holly Black
40. “I mean, really. Who sends their kid to boarding school? It’s so Hogwarts. Only mine doesn’t have cute boy wizards or magic candy or flying lessons.” —from Anna and The French Kiss by Stephanie Perkins
41. “”A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle.”
I really hate this expression. I bet fish would totally want bicycles.” —from Princess On The Brink by Meg Cabot
42. “Don’t get stabbed. It makes everything awkward.” —from The Madness Underneath by Maureen Johnson
YA Quotes About Reading
43. “She delighted in the smell of the ink, the rough feel of the paper between her fingers, the rustle of sweet pages, the shapes of letters before her eyes.” —from My Lady Jane by Cynthia Hand, Brodi Ashton, and Jodi Meadows
44. “It was impossible to feel alone in a room full of favorite books. I had the sense that they knew me personally, that they’d read me cover to cover as I’d read them.” —from Noteworthy by Riley Redgate
45. “It’s amazing how the more you read, the less you know.” —from Scarlett Epstein Hates It Here by Anna Breslaw
46. “Only the very weak-minded refuse to be influenced by literature and poetry.” —from Clockwork Angel by Cassandra Clare
47. “When I read, I feel emotion all on my own. Emotion no living person is making me feel.” —from Pivot Point by Kasie West
48. “[T]he books we love, they love us back. And just as we mark our places in the pages, those pages leave their marks on us.” —from Nevernight by Jay Kristoff
49. “No one with a book is ever alone, even in the darkest moments.” —from Ash and Quill by Rachel Caine
50. “Libraries were full of ideas—perhaps the most dangerous and powerful of all weapons.” —from Throne of Glass by Sarah J Maas
51. “Our private tastes in books showed a hint of our secret selves.” —from The Walls Around Us by Nova Ren Suma
If you’d like even more inspiring words beyond these YA book quotes, check out this round-up of book quotes for every month of the year, excellent lines from Anne of Green Gables, and wisdom from Judy Blume.
