Top 120 Adrienne Young Quotes (2026 Update)

1. “Nothing is free.”

— Adrienne Young

2. “Don’t draw attention to yourself. It’s better to be no one than to be someone in this city.”

— Adrienne Young

3. “She was the sun and the sea and the moon in one. She was the north star that pulled us to the shore.”

— Adrienne Young

4. “Like a weary bird flying out over the most desolate sea, I finally had a place to land.”

— Adrienne Young

5. “Like light cast over the morning water, it became new. Every moment that lay ahead, like an uncharted sea. this was a new beginning.”

— Adrienne Young

6. “Because you and I have cursed ourselves, Fable. We will always have something to lose. I knew it that day in Tempest Snare when I kissed you. I knew it in Dern when I told you that I loved you.”

— Adrienne Young

7. “We were salt and sand and sea and storm. We were make in the narrows.”

— Adrienne Young

8. “This pain inside me was like broken glass clutched in a fist. I knew it was drawing blood. Bleeding me out, all day, every day. But still, I couldn’t just open my fingers and let it go. Because this wasn’t that kind of love.”

— Adrienne Young

9. “Because I’m somehow still connected to you. Like a part of me isn’t there if you’re not there. For years, I thought that would go away. It didn’t.”

— Adrienne Young

10. “Nothing was what it seemed. Every truth was twisted. Every lie carefully constructed.”

— Adrienne Young

11. “There are spells for breaking and spells for mending. But there are no spells for forgetting.”

— Adrienne Young

12. “But I’d spent my life not belonging anywhere and all of that was about to change.”

— Adrienne Young

13. “She smelled like sun and the drying herbs that hung in the tea shop. She felt like home.”

— Adrienne Young

14. “I was the ice on the river. The snow clinging onto the mountainside.”

— Adrienne Young

15. “The only safety that existed was in being completely alone.”

— Adrienne Young

16. “The moon rose up over my broken home and I broke with it.”

— Adrienne Young

17. “We were salt and sand and sea and storm.”

— Adrienne Young

18. “I’d been in love with August Salt since before I knew what the words meant. I don’t know when it happened – the narrow space between seconds, when a spark like the birth of a hundred stars found a home in my blood. Since then, every day had been colored with the glittering light of it dragging me in its wake, pulling me beneath its surface. And I didn’t care. If this was what it was like to drown, then for the rest of my life, I didn’t want to take another sip of air.”

— Adrienne Young

19. “My mother had loved Saint with a love that could set fire to the sea.”

— Adrienne Young

20. “Vegr yfir fjor.” Honor above life.”

— Adrienne Young

21. “I’d crossed the Narrows for a man who’s probably never even loved me. For a dream that would never come true.”

— Adrienne Young

22. “You want something in this life?” She came to stand over me. “You take it, Fable.”

— Adrienne Young

23. “Saint believed that she would never betray him. He’d given his heart to her, after all. Like he’d given it to me. But something told me the deep wouldn’t share a love like that forever. One day, she would take.”

— Adrienne Young

24. “He may have chosen to leave his clan, but there were some things you couldn’t cut from your soul.”

— Adrienne Young

25. “The fog sat on the field like a veil, but we could hear it. The blades of swords and axes brushing against armor vests. Quick footsteps in sucking mud. My heart beat almost in rhythm with the sounds, pulling one breath in and letting it touch another before I let it go.”

— Adrienne Young

26. “You’ll find your own end before the snow melts because your pride and your anger are more important to you than your own survival.”

— Adrienne Young

27. “Because that kiss broke open some dark night sky within me filled with stars and moons and flaming comets. That darkness was replaced by the blazing fire of the sun racing under my skin.”

— Adrienne Young

28. “What I want is not to die alone,” she said, her voice suddenly small. “I didn’t really choose this life. It’s just the only one I have...”

— Adrienne Young

29. “There’s no need to go looking for war. War is faithful to come looking for us time and again.”

— Adrienne Young

30. “Sometimes the signs were subtle, like a fleeting shadow or an echo in the trees. Other times, the island wasn’t gentle with her words. This wasn’t like the gentle shift of wind before a storm. Something dead had woken.”

— Adrienne Young

31. “I left you there because I have never loved anything in my life like I love you. Not Isolde. Not the trade. Nothing.”

— Adrienne Young

32. “We both know that surviving means sometimes doing things that haunt you.”

— Adrienne Young

33. “I stared at her. “This kind of bond is formed when a soul is broken. It’s formed through pain, loss, and heartbreak. They’re bound by something deeper than we can see. And that made Iri family.”

— Adrienne Young

34. “My father had always told me that seabirds were the souls of lost traders. To turn them away or not give them a place to land or nest was bad luck.”

— Adrienne Young

35. “I can’t decide if I like you or if I think you’re stupid.” She laughed.”

— Adrienne Young

36. “We find things, just as we lose things. If you’ve lost your honor, you’ll find it again.”

— Adrienne Young

37. “There are some things that can’t be carved from a person, no matter how far from home they’ve sailed.”

— Adrienne Young

38. “It caught the wind above me as I untied the lines and pulled. The night sky was black and empty, stars cast across it in swirling sprays. There was no moon, leaving the deck of the ship dark below. I leaned into the mast, letting my weight fall into the ropes, and tipped my head back, feeling the wind rush around me.”

— Adrienne Young

39. “I’m on the Marigold to crew.” “No, you’re not.” She sighed, getting to her feet. “You’re on the Marigold to find a family.”

— Adrienne Young

40. “Home was a ship that was at the bottom of the sea, where my mother’s bones lay sleeping.”

— Adrienne Young

41. “I kept my eyes ahead, leaving Fiske standing in between the middle of the two night skies, the stars and the moon encircling him. The only hot, living thing on the ice. The only thing I could feel.”

— Adrienne Young

42. “I didn’t plan to be a father. I didn’t want to be one. But the first time I held you in my hands, you were so small. I had never been so terrified of anything in my life. I feel like I’ve barely slept since the night you were born.”

— Adrienne Young

43. “Nothing is free, they were things no one owed you. They were rules, keep the secret.”

— Adrienne Young

44. “Isolde was the wind and sea and sky of Saint’s world. She was the pattern of stars that he navigated by, the sum of all directions on his compass. And he was lost without her.”

— Adrienne Young

45. “That I’d loved him with the same fire that I’d hated him. That if anything happened to Saint, a part of me would be taken with him.”

— Adrienne Young

46. “It was the spot I’d sat every morning, waiting for my father’s ship to return, even though he told me it wasn’t coming back... it took me two years to believe him.”

— Adrienne Young

47. “At times, I’d even felt like that one memory was the only thing that was keeping me breathing. And there were a million times after I left Saoirse that I wished to God it never happened.”

— Adrienne Young

48. “I hadn’t just left my mother in the Unnamed Sea. I’d left my home. The place I’d taken my first breaths. But I could feel in my bones that these unknown waters were the place I’d take my last.”

— Adrienne Young

49. “I wept. A dark, sacred cry rising up out of me. he held me together, keeping the pieces from falling down around us. And I cried until I couldn’t feel. I cried until I couldn’t think.”

— Adrienne Young

50. “Down here, in the deep, with the Marigold floating above, it was quiet. No Saint or Zola or Jeval. No secrets or lies or half-truths. Down here, we were only two mortals in an upside-down world.”

— Adrienne Young