Ya Quotes

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.

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’d been wanting to try a YA novel for years because I saw how exciting the genre was and how amazing, hungry, and curious the readers were.

Ya know, I always admired Ray Kroc, the man who invented McDonald’s. Ray had a vision of the most commonplace thing – a hamburger and fries to go – but to him it was just the greatest thing ever, and he was going to make it the greatest thing ever for everybody else, and he did.

But, I swear, they’re turning Donna into Annie Hall this season. More ties. More suits. But they’re also keeping her really motivated, ya know? Like, wanting to be a rock journalist. Wanting to be the first woman president.

The YA category is an entirely new one, and seems to have more to do with readability than with age group or theme. The adult YA readers I know do actually consistently say that they are looking for an easy read, a fun read, an unchallenging read.

Rob Lowe, I’ve known him for a long time because I have three daughters, ya know. He’s been cruising those three girls for a long time.

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.

So many queer people come out constantly for the rest of their lives, ya know? To the people they work with, to people in taxi cabs. Whatever it is, it isn’t the one day.

Honesty and truth in writing is so important, and I think that YA writing above all is honest, and I think that appeals to anyone of any age.

I’ve always liked long hair. My dad’s always had long hair, but he always tells me, ‘I never had it in a ponytail.’ And I say to him, ‘You weren’t an England goalie either, were ya.’

And there had to be a dagger thrust in the heart of the left to tell them that you are no longer gonna give five years for a Smith Act prosecution or one year for Contempt of Court, but we’re gonna kill ya!

I focus a little more on pacing when I write books in the young adult category, and of course there’s the great American fear of anything sexual, so that’s somewhat backed off in YA.

I have this fear of coming across as a Barbie doll who got lucky. Style is a big part of who I am, but it’s not who I am. Ya know?

The minute you start getting down about how your life is panned out – I’m not a religious person, but how God made ya – the minute you get down about that, it’s gonna eat at you and eat at you.

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.

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.

I met Jim Jarmusch when I started recording my album ‘Ya Nass.’ He was writing the script for ‘Only Lovers Left Alive.’ Jarmusch was always a great inspiration to me, way before meeting him. Working with him was fantastic.

One of the things that defines YA is a really strong narrative. Adults love YA because, at the end of the day, they’re good stories and page-turners. The other element is emotion. The teen years are a very emotional and intense time, and I think it’s a time we that we can all relate to and remember.

If I can’t outplay you in football, I’m gonna fight ya.

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.

Cars are my weakness, what can I tell ya? I like to buy cars.

I’ve always wanted to be a part of that experience of writing to an audience that is just starting to fall in love with books. When I felt that my writing for adults had become cemented, I decided to write a YA series.

Money is an unavoidable consequence, but it isn’t the reason I write; if it was, I wouldn’t have written any of the YA books, because advances in that field are small compared to what I’d got now for an ‘adult’ DW.

I must be honest here; I don’t think there’s such a thing as ‘unconventional’ when it comes to YA. YA readers are the most open-minded in the literary world. They’ll read anything.

I like performers who I know are for real. You can tell, man, there’s an intensity about their stuff. You can tell right away they’re real people, ya know?

I always bring out the best in men I fight, but Joe Frazier, I’ll tell the world right now, brings out the best in me. I’m gonna tell ya, that’s one helluva man, and God bless him.

It’s funny, we started writing chick-lit when it was just becoming a crowded marketplace, and now the same thing is happening with YA. It really used to just be one shelf at the library – Nancy Drew and Judy Blume.

I try to be measured and thoughtful about what I put out there because I know a lot of young people follow me on Twitter, and I take that seriously – which is why I don’t exclusively tweet about cookies and ‘Game of Thrones’ and YA.

I guess a good song is a good song is a good song, ya know.

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

Filmmaking is a very complex form – ya know, acting, lighting, screenwriting, storytelling, music, editing – all these things have to come together.

And I know this happens because I took economics, and I’d explain it to ya, but I flunked that course. Not my fault. They taught it at 8 o’clock in the morning. And there is absolutely nothing you can learn out of one bloodshot eye.

Ya gots to work with what you gots to work with.

I write what I like to read, and I enjoy love triangles in YA and adult fiction – not to mention in other media like TV, opera, theatre, and even in video games! I relish when dark and compelling characters compete for our protagonist’s heart. The doubts, the uncertainty – the jealousy! – can be breathtaking.

I think that’s the great thing, ya’ know, that women can do anything that they want now.

The only thing that makes a book YA is that it is about teenagers, and it is written in a very conventional, non-artsy, non-pretentious way. YA is not the place for the oblique or the cryptic. If it is in any way experimental in form, it is not YA.

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.

I didn’t plan to write YA – I had a story that simply wasn’t working as a straight-up fantasy novel.

I tell ya, I could have got some more jobs if I’d tried, but I went to Sweden instead.

I do a bit called, ‘You go, girl!’ where I say, ‘Don’t tell me ‘You go, girl!’ I get it. I don’t need you encourage me.’ And nine times out of 10 after I finish the bit, some guy in the back will yell ‘You go, girl!’ I get a lot of that or ‘I hear ya!’ I don’t generally – knock on fake wood – get mean heckling.

They put me on television. And the whole thing broke loose. It was wild, I tell ya for sure.

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

Can I play a southern character? You betcha. Can I do the voice of Tourist Dad and Carnival Barker? Ya betcha. Can I do Fix-It Felix? Ya betcha. But I don’t want to just play southern characters, so I hide it; I bury it. I tamp it down like a secret. Like a dirty little secret.

I will say I love competing, and I was in a great era of playing with young Phil Mickelson and older Greg Norman and Nick Price. I don’t know if YA Title could throw the ball these days, but you can play golf for a long, long time.

But ya know what, I am a part of something that happened. I’m a part of the music that happened. My voice is one more instrument, is what it is. So that’s the way I feel about people who play on sessions.

When I first started out acting, I didn’t have anything to lose. I had another career. If I fell on my face, I could say, ‘I’ll see ya,’ and go back to working.

I installed anti-rust roofing into homes in Cairns. I packed boxes at Baby Barn. I was even a Manny! Mate, I know more about braiding hair and My Little Pony than most men, I can tell ya.

I hear it all the time. Walking through an airport or something like that, I still get a random, ‘Hey, I’m a Bills fan. Appreciate ya!’ Stuff like that.

I didn’t ‘decide’ to write YA, per se. But every time I thought of a story, it featured characters 15, 16, 17.

Fantasy novels give this illusion that the stakes are as high as they feel when you’re a teenager. But I think for teenagers they actually are that high. I think you really are dealing in a world of tremendous cruelty and intensity, and YA gives truth to that.

People who avoid the brick walls – all power to ya, but we all have to hit them sometimes in order to push through to the next level, to evolve.

I love to sing some Beyonce – ya know, like ‘All the Single Ladies.’ I’ll sing that – maybe not with the body shakin’ – but I’ll have a little bit of the hand movement going on.

Paige is someone who is very close to me – ya know, outside of the ring – she helped me when I first got to NXT.

I read YA novels constantly, so I really want to be in a young adult rom-com, but I worry that I’m aging into the parent role, which is a little scary.

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.

While I’m writing YA, I can’t read YA, and the same with adult. I usually only listen to music while I’m writing YA.

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.

I’ve been shocked for a long time in a lot of circumstances. I get shocked when they say, ‘Hey, we’re paying ya.’

It’s liberating to wear clothes that are outside the boundaries of what I’m supposed to wear, ya know, based on the traditional model, whether that be a country music singer, or being from the country. It’s not a rebellious thing.

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

I don’t differentiate in the way that the genre creators want differentiation to be made. I feel that I have never written children’s or YA stories particularly.

I’m always looking for cool stuff to do because that’s what we’re supposed to do, ya know?

I play a lot of football, but let me tell ya, I am nowhere near as good as Jamie Tartt. I wish that I could play football like he does.

In terms of age, I think I’ve covered about as wide a range as is possible, having written everything from picture books to early chapter books to middle grade novels to YA to one adult novel – and having been editor and lead writer for a magazine for retired people!

I don’t think Jack Nicholson has ever called me Stephen. He’s like, ‘Hey, Dorff. How are ya?’

Ratna Pathak Shah played the modern-age mom perfectly well in ‘Jaane Tu Ya Jaane na’ and ‘Khoobsurat.’

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

The YA author community is generally pretty friendly, and they care.

Ever since I worked on ‘Buffy’, it’s always helped me to find a genre container for something, and I was like, ‘Oh, this is where the movie melodrama has gone to. It’s gone to YA.’

Chocolate’s good for ya – high cocoa content chocolate is.

I’ll tell ya, when you open up that can of dab, it’s always fresh.

When men I have dated over the years whined about, ‘Oh, you make no time for me’ – see ya! I just dumped them. I don’t need that pressure in my life.

One of the interesting things about YA books – I don’t know about Percy Jackson, but I do know about ‘Twilight’ and ‘Maximum Ride’: There are a lot of adult readers. In fact, we released ‘Maximum Ride’ both as a paperback for kids and as a mass release for adults.

When I left WWE, TNA offered me a deal. It was a sweet deal: ya sit at home the majority of the year. Just show up every now and then and make some money. That was a sweet deal for me; that was like a vacation.

I think more people are going to continue reading YA as well as reading other books because they have learned that they can find books there which they will truly love: a teenage protagonist is close enough to adult so readers of whichever age can sympathise and empathise with them.

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 songs are my babies and I am protective about them, especially ‘Main Rahoon Ya Na Rahoon’ since I dedicated it to my grandfather.

I’m free of stress and worries now because if I don’t like something I’m doing, I just find the fun in it instead of being miserable. Let me have fun with the people I work with, let me have fun making money – when I grew up so poor, ya know?

If you’ve ever had your heart broken, it’s like, once is enough – you can live a lifetime on that. Ya know? You can write a lot of records on one broken heart.

I think I bought into that whole rock n’ roll lifestyle, and all that does in the end is kill ya. So I don’t recommend it to anyone.

I never felt ready to have a baby until I was about 37 years old. I knew I always wanted kids someday, but I needed to be ‘ready,’ ya know?

All of my books, which are supposedly, I mean they’re called YA novels, my hope is that adults would find no reason not to read them if they read them.

Get Ya Mind Right,’ when you play that it’s a club banger.

I’ll tell ya, I’m a genuinely nice guy. I really am. A real nice guy. But I think I’m temperamental.

My mom always said that there would be haters. Not everyone can love ya.

But it was great, we sit in the same dressing room where, like, Johnny Cash sat and Willie Nelson and all those guys. That was in itself something amazing – I was on the same space these guys stood on, ya know?

My friends know I’m a really big movie buff, and I named Vivianne after a movie character. She was named after Vivianne Walker in ‘Ya Ya Sisterhood.’

What I write, if you have to label it, is crossover, and I think that much of the stuff that is called children’s or YA is in fact crossover and is equally valid for anyone who likes to read fantasy.

People say, ‘He doesn’t want to be a spokesperson for the gay community.’ I do, of course I do, but I want to be a spokesperson for everyone. Ya know, straight people, gay people, bisexual. I don’t want it to be limited.