Top 120 Adrienne Young Quotes (2025 Update)
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51. “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

52. “Every autumn, when the crowds filled Main Street, I would watch out the window of my mother’s shop and imagine him appearing in the stream of faces. More than once, I even thought I saw him. It took longer than I wanted to admit for me to realize that I couldn’t cut him from me. That some part of him had been fused to places I couldn’t even see.”

— Adrienne Young

53. “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

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

— Adrienne Young

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

— Adrienne Young

56. “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

57. “I’ve lived enough years now to know that there were some ghosts that haunted you forever. Saoirse had secrets, yes. But so did we.”

— Adrienne Young

58. “If it hadn’t been my prison, I might even think it was beautiful.”

— Adrienne Young

59. “Even if you can’t see her when you close your eyes, our bodies and our minds remember things that we can’t. They hold onto things.”

— Adrienne Young

60. “My life had been decided by a deal. So had Ezra’s. But I was finished letting other people decide for me. The power of Henrik Roth was no more than lifting smoke. He was the sum of beliefs and myths and tales told. I was ready to tell my own stories.”

— Adrienne Young

61. “I didn’t know that teenagers didn’t usually fall into that kind of love, or that there was anything unusual about us at all. I just knew that she felt like air to me.”

— Adrienne Young

62. “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

63. “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

64. “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

65. “It was a world poised on the top of a knife.”

— Adrienne Young

66. “I could still see a young Eelyn standing on the beach turned into the wind, a sword in one hand and an axe in the other. I hadn’t lost her. I hadn’t buried her. I’d only let her change into something new.”

— Adrienne Young

67. “Now I was the girl who’d found her own way. And I also had something to lose.”

— Adrienne Young

68. “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

69. “I’d seen enough strange things at sea to believe it. The Riven had lost her soul a long time ago. So had we.”

— Adrienne Young

70. “I underestimated my ability to be on this ship with you and not touch you.”

— Adrienne Young

71. “I’d been eighteen years old. I’d known nothing about suffering or responsibility or loss, but somehow, I’d known this soul-deep king of love that I now wondered if most people never found. It cut open a vein in me that never stopped flowing.”

— Adrienne Young

72. “The Spinners were wise, but they weren’t always kind. Sometimes fate was a tangled knot. Sometimes it was a noose. Or a net. But sometimes, it was the rope that pulled you from the sinking deep.”

— Adrienne Young

73. “There was something knowing in the way he looked at me. Something that pulled at the knots in the net of lies we’d both told.”

— Adrienne Young

74. “I wasn’t sure anymore which were memories and which were dreams. I’d lost track of that a long time ago.”

— Adrienne Young

75. “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

76. “Night fell over the sea, painting the Marigold black except for the white sails stretched against the dark, clouded sky. The stars and moon hid, giving no sign of where the sea ended and the sky began, and I liked the feeling. Like we were floating in the air. The west wind was warm, finding its way onto the ship before it ran back to the wake on the water behind us.”

— Adrienne Young

77. “They weren’t afraid of battle. They were afraid of losing what they loved. And that’s what made them brave in battle.”

— Adrienne Young

78. “I dropped my eyes, the sudden flush in my cheeks warming my skin.”

— Adrienne Young

79. “I didn’t know if it was this ship or the sea or the strange look of the sky that made my blood hum in my veins. I hoped it was. I hoped it was anything but him.”

— Adrienne Young

80. “I loved her with a love that broke me.”

— Adrienne Young

81. “A look like thunder after a lightning strike lit on his face. Fear wound around every inch of his body and squeezed, and the feel of his hands on me sent a chill up my spine. There was something knowing in the way he looked at me. Something pulled at the knots in the net of lies we’d both told.”

— Adrienne Young

82. “The first time I’d seen his darkness and every time he’d seen mine. We were salt and sand and sea and storm.”

— Adrienne Young

83. “If I had anyone skilled enough to make it, I wouldn’t have commissioned you, Ezra.”

— Adrienne Young

84. “The rope slipped, and I fell flat on my back, hitting the ground so hard that the impact made my lungs curl like fists.”

— Adrienne Young

85. “Home felt an entire world away.”

— Adrienne Young

86. “What he was saying-the things he told me-was his way of showing me he trusted me. It was also his way of giving me the match. If I wanted to, I could burn him down. But if we were going to do this, I would have to be his safe harbor and he would have to be mine.”

— Adrienne Young

87. “I stood against the wind, watching the movement of the water around the coral islands. It pushed up the shelf gently, and if it was as calm beneath the surface as it was above, I could do the dive in just minutes.”

— Adrienne Young

88. “And I think I’ve loved you since the first time we anchored in Jeval.”

— Adrienne Young

89. “And no matter where I went, I’d never get home. Because home was a ship that was at the bottom of the sea, where my mother’s bones lay sleeping.”

— Adrienne Young

90. “There was no way to undo it. No amount of coin or power could turn time back to that night in Tempest Snare, or the day Isolde showed up, asking for a place on Saint’s crew. It was one long series of tragically beautiful knots that bound us together.”

— Adrienne Young

91. “After a lifetime of hungering for things to change, I’d settled into a life that I hoped never would.”

— Adrienne Young

92. “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

93. “I’d envied Iri my whole life for his open heart, and now mine had been pried open too.”

— Adrienne Young

94. “My mother looked at me then, with something in her eyes I’d never seen before. A reverence. As if something marvelous and at the same time harrowing had just happened. She blinked, pulling me between her and Saint, and I burrowed in, their warmth instantly making me feel like a child again.”

— Adrienne Young

95. “It was terrifying- that feeling- like there was something tying me to him. Because if one of us fell into the darkness, the other would too.”

— Adrienne Young

96. “This time, I left Saint behind.”

— Adrienne Young

97. “So she’d never asked and I’d never told her, and in the end, it broke us anyway.”

— Adrienne Young

98. “Nothing is free. He wasn’t just talking about food or passage or the clothes on your back. He was talking about respect. Safety. Protection. They were things no one owed you. And one way or another, you always paid.”

— Adrienne Young

99. “He looked at me with a hundred stories lit behind his eyes.”

— Adrienne Young

100. “I know you don’t know how to love me. I know you’re not built for it.”

— Adrienne Young