Nicola Yoon Quotes

“A word can start off meaning one thing and end up meaning another… Words shouldn’t be allowed to change meanings.”

“Everyone’s got some place to be. Finding God is not on the schedule.”

“My mom says it’s time for me to give up now, and that what I’m doing is futile.”

“We tell ourselves there are reasons for the things that happen, but we’re just telling ourselves stories. We make them up. They don’t mean anything.”

“Names are powerful things. They act as an identity marker and a kind of map, locating you in time and geography. More than that, they can be a compass.”

“When I was a little girl fairy tales were my favorite books because even before you opened them you knew how they are going to end. Happily ever after.”

“Maybe I should give up. I don’t know why I haven’t yet. The universe is clearly trying to save me from myself. I bet if I looked for signs about parting ways, I would find them.”

“Life is just a series of dumb decisions and indecisions and coincidences that we ascribe meaning to.”

“You can’t always see God’s plan.”

“Where did all those feelings go? People spend their whole lives looking for love. Poems and songs and entire novels are written about it. But how can you trust something that can end as suddenly as it begins?”

“When they say the heart wants what it wants, they’re talking about the poetic heart—the heart of love songs and soliloquies, the one that can break as if it were just-formed glass. They’re not talking about the real heart, the one that only needs healthy foods and aerobic exercise.”

“America’s not really a melting pot. It’s more like one of those divided metal plates with separate sections for starch, meat, and veggies.”

“What is falling in love? A series of small coincidences that we say means everything because we want to believe that our tiny lives matter on a galactic scale. But falling in love doesn’t even begin to compare on the formation of the universe.”

“It’s not a religion. It exists whether you believe in it or not.”

“It’s not up to you to help other people fit you into a box.”

“I love this part of getting to know someone. How every piece of new information, every new expression seems magical.”

“Human beings are not reasonable creatures. Instead of being ruled by logic, we are ruled by emotions. The world would be a happier place if the opposite were true.”

“Who cares what you want? The only thing that matters is what is good for you. Your mother and I only care about what is good for you. You go to school, you become a doctor, you be successful. Then you never have to work in a store like this. Then you have money and respect, and all the things you want will come. You find a nice girl and have children and you have the American Dream. Why would you throw your future away for temporary things that you only want right now?”

“I’ll be a great doctor with excellent bedside skills. I’ll be perfectly happy. But something about Natasha makes me think my life could be extraordinary.”

“My father and I were close once. In Jamaica, and even after we moved here, we were inseparable. Most times it felt like me and my dad—the Dreamers—against my mom and my brother—the Non-Dreamers...I listened to his stories about how our life would be after he became famous. I listened long after my mom and brother had stopped listening.”

“This year is a little harder than the previous. Maybe it’s because I’m eighteen now. Technically, I’m an adult. I should be leaving home, going off to college. My mom should be dreading empty-nest syndrome. But because of SCID, I’m not going anywhere.”

“Maybe growing up means disappointing the people we love.”

“I guess if you’re going to be born with an illness that requires constant care, then it’s good to have your mom as your doctor.”

“Actually, mine’s not blank at all, but I really can’t tell him how beautiful his eyes are. They’re Atlantic Ocean blue, just like he’d said. It’s strange because of course I’d known that. But the difference between knowing it and seeing them in person is the difference between dreaming of flying and flight.”

“It feels strange not to talk to my mom about something, someone, who’s becoming so important to me. My mom and I are drifting apart, but not because we’re spending less time together. And not because Olly’s replacing her. We’re drifting apart because for the first time in my life, I have a secret to keep.”

″ ‘It’s better this way. I don’t want you to have a broken heart.’ ‘Love can’t kill me,’ I say, parroting Carla’s words. ‘That’s not true,’ she says. ‘Whoever told you that?’ ”

“How am I supposed to go back to my old life, my days stretching out before me with unending and brutal sameness? How am I supposed to go back to being The Girl Who Reads? Not that I begrudge my life in books. All I know about the world I’ve learned from them. But a description of a tree is not a tree, and a thousand paper kisses will never equal the feel of Olly’s lips against mine.”

“He’s much too smart to fall for this, but he wants it to be true. He wants it to be true more than he wants the truth. The smile that breaks across his face is cautious, but so beautiful that I can’t look away. I would lie to him again for that smile.”

“Basically, I’m allergic to the world. Anything can trigger a bout of sickness.”

“I wish again that I could talk to my mom about this. I want to ask her why I get breathless when I think of him. I want to share my giddiness with her. I want to tell her all the funny things Olly says. I want to tell her how I can’t make myself stop thinking about him even though I try. I want to ask her if this is the way she felt about Dad at the beginning.”

“Olly’s rejection has made me feel like a little girl again. It reminded me why I stopped paying attention to the world before.”

″ ‘You should leave them,’ I say. ‘It’s not safe for you there.’ I say it because he doesn’t know it. He’s trapped by the same memory of love, of better times, that his mother is, and it isn’t enough.”

“What am I going to regret? My mind cycles through visions: my mom alone in my white room wondering where everyone she’s ever loved went. My mom alone in a green field staring down at my grave and my dad’s grave and my brother’s grave. My mom dying all alone in that house.”

“Ever since Olly came into my life there’ve been two Maddys: the one who lives through books and doesn’t want to die, and the one who lives and suspects that death will be a small price to pay for it. The first Maddy is surprised at the direction of her thoughts. The second Maddy, the one from the Hawaii photograph? She’s like a god—impervious to cold, famine, disease, natural and man-made disasters. She’s impervious to heartbreak. The second Maddy knows that this pale half life is not really living.”

“I know she’s not upset that I bought new clothes. She’s upset that I didn’t ask her opinion and bought them in colors that she didn’t expect. She’s upset with the change she didn’t see coming. I resent and understand it at the same time.”

″ If I were going to be something when I grew up, an architect is what I would be.”

“I don’t leave my house, have not left my house in seventeen years. The only people I ever see are my mom and my nurse, Carla. But then one day, a moving truck arrives next door.”

“Maybe we can’t predict the future, but we can predict some things. For example, I am certainly going to fall in love with Olly. It’s almost certainly going to be a disaster.”

“Everything’s a risk. Not doing anything is a risk. It’s up to you.”

“In the beginning there was nothing. And then there was everything”