Top 120 Adrienne Young Quotes (2025 Update)
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51. “This time, I left Saint behind.”

— Adrienne Young

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

— Adrienne Young

53. “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

54. “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

55. “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

56. “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

57. “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

58. “My heart was that strange, shooting star. Always falling.”

— Adrienne Young

59. “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

60. “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

61. “I looked up into Myra’s face, twisted with madness. It was the look she gave our enemy in battle, and now it fell on me.”

— Adrienne Young

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

— Adrienne Young

63. “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

64. “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

65. “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

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

— Adrienne Young

67. “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

68. “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

69. “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

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

— Adrienne Young

71. “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

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

— Adrienne Young

73. “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

74. “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

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

— Adrienne Young

76. “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

77. “Home felt an entire world away.”

— Adrienne Young

78. “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

79. “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

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

— Adrienne Young

81. “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

82. “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

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

— Adrienne Young

84. “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

85. “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

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

— Adrienne Young

87. “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

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

— Adrienne Young

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

— Adrienne Young

90. “If we’re going to fight, we have to know that we are still who we are. If we’re going to die, we have to know that we’re dying for something.”

— Adrienne Young

91. “It wasn’t the kind of kiss that lovers shared, but there were a hundred secrets in the way that they looked at each other.”

— Adrienne Young

92. “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

93. “The writhing, bleeding hole inside of me closed up. I let him erase it. I let him make it go away.”

— Adrienne Young

94. “I didn’t belong on the land or on the docks or the cities that lay across the Narrows, The place I belonged was gone.”

— Adrienne Young

95. “It was the end. And at the end, life becomes precious.”

— Adrienne Young

96. “We’d had no beginning, I realized. We just always were. When I thought about it like that, it was comforting. Like there was no waiting for an end, either.”

— Adrienne Young

97. “I pulled her hand toward me to secure the straps of her shield onto her arm by memory. We’d been fighting mates for the last five years and I knew every piece of her armor as well as she knew every badly mended bone in my body.”

— Adrienne Young

98. “When he was gone, I reached into my pocket and pulled my idol of Iri free. The wood was smooth and shining where I’d held it in prayer under every moon that rose in the sky. I carried it against my heart as I fought. I slept with it beside me. We became warriors together. And long before that, we were friends.”

— Adrienne Young

99. “Like everything I’d ever been taught didn’t fit into the shape of this world.”

— Adrienne Young

100. “I may not have known how to find him, but he’d known where I was. He’d always known. August wasn’t lost. He wasn’t taken away or waiting for me somewhere. He never came back. He had never come back for me.”

— Adrienne Young