Quotes About Youth

I think the idea of a distant, far off dystopia, where the world is completely different from what we have now, is good, but it's been done. Especially in YA movies.

I'm building this reputation as YA heartbreaker, I know. Some people like 'happily ever after,' but I don't think that's me.

As a kid, I went from reading kids' books to reading science fiction to reading, you know, adult fiction. There was never any gap. YA was a thing when I was a teenager, but it was a library category, not a marketing category, and you never really felt like it was a huge section.

'Don't Look Back' is my first YA contemporary mystery/thriller. It's been described as 'Black Swan' meets 'Pretty Little Liars'.

Teen fiction should be about teenagers - no matter how many arguments there are about what YA lit should be, this seems like the one thing we can all agree on.

My first YA novel, not many people have read. It's a fickle business. There's a degree of timing and luck involved.

'Hard Hit,' a YA collection of poems, explores the country of grief and survival. Mark, a 16-year-old boy and skilled pitcher, must confront the coming death of his beloved father with the help of his friends, family, baseball, and an idiosyncratic belief in God. I used my own experience of my parents' deaths to inform this journey.

When I was young, there was no such thing as YA. You simply went from reading children's novels to reading adult novels. So one year, I was reading Tove Jansson, and the next year, I was reading Stephen King.

I think 'Holler If Ya Hear Me' is almost 'A Raisin in the Sun' 50 years later, with just a different 20-year-old voice speaking the words. But it's about access to the American dream and equal lives having equal value in America. It's still holding a mirror up to us so we can see ourselves.

There are all kinds of voices in YA, and they are realistic and unflinching.

YA does a fantastic job of being socially aware and, at the same time, entertaining.

When you watch stuff that is YA, it looks like it's been made YA. It doesn't look real.

I liked the sort of YA classics. I loved 'The Chronicles of Narnia.' I loved 'The Chronicles of Prydain' by Lloyd Alexander, who is amazing. Basically, 'Chronicles of' - I was in.

I think that's what distinguishes YA from adult fiction - it's not just the age of the characters, but it's the sense of hope. Because I don't think I've ever read a YA book that feels completely hopeless at the end.

In the YA community, we are fighting for you and alongside you. When you make your voice heard, we're gonna be even louder on your behalf. That's definitely what I would like for teenagers to know. We've got you. We got you. I promise we do.

Initially, I wanted to write middle grade. YA scared me: there's a lot of responsibility in being a YA author. It's so important to give that age range the right books that reflect their world and show them themselves.

When I was in the YA age range myself, I didn't feel like there were a lot of books for me.

When I was a kid, we had this great advantage of there being no YA books. You read kid books and then went on to adult books. When I was 12 or 13, I read all of Steinbeck and Hemingway. I thought I should read everything a writer writes.

I think that YA stories have a lot of heart, and I think that whatever age we are, we connect to them because we sort of see ourselves in them.

YA, I feel, is so accurate to what it is like be a teenager and the realities of being a teenager and being in love.

YA fiction tends to have a finite quality. You're looking toward a goal - prom or graduation or revolution - and we leave these characters after a moment of tremendous transformation.

YA readers are just not rigid about genre. They're all for the mash-up.

My first song was a hardcore knock-off of 'Tangled Up in Blue.' It was based on a story maybe I had heard before. I was 13. The woman died in the end - she was sleeping on the railroad tracks. Pretty edgy, ya know.

I was in a group called the Yacht Club, and they were all older than me. I was kind of the baby.