Top 500 Nicola Yoon Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “Teenagers are the same all over. Give them an inch and they’ll take a mile.”

— Nicola Yoon

2. “A japanese phrase “koi no yokan”: It’s the feeling when you meet someone that you’re going to fall in love with them. Maybe you don’t love them right away, but it’s inevitable that you will.”

— Nicola Yoon

3. “Maybe I’m holding out hope that one day, someday, things will change.”

— Nicola Yoon

4. “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.”

— Nicola Yoon

5. “If I had a suitcase, I would love it. I would shrink-wrap it when I traveled. I would put stickers from every place I’d ever been on it. And when I saw it on the carousel I would grab it with both hands and I’d be so happy to have it because then my adventures would really begin.”

— Nicola Yoon

6. “Human beings are not reasonable creatures. Instead of being ruled by logic, we are ruled by emotions.”

— Nicola Yoon

7. “Life doesn’t always go the way you plan.”

— Nicola Yoon

8. “I am not a princess. And I don’t need rescuing.”

— Nicola Yoon

9. “Growing up and seeing your parents’ flaws is like losing your religion. I don’t believe in God anymore. I don’t believe in my father either.”

— Nicola Yoon

10. “La vida es un regalo; no te olvides de vivirla.”

— Nicola Yoon

11. “There’s a Japanese phrase that I like: koi no yokan. It doesn’t mean love at first sight. It’s closer to love at second sight. It’s the feeling when you meet someone that you’re going to fall in love with them. Maybe you don’t love them right away, but it’s inevitable that you will.”

— Nicola Yoon

12. “Everything’s a risk. Not doing anything is a risk.”

— Nicola Yoon

13. “Maybe part of falling in love with someone else is also falling in love with yourself. I like who I am with her.”

— Nicola Yoon

14. “Sometimes people tell you things by not telling you things.”

— Nicola Yoon

15. “The biggest risk in life is not taking one.”

— Nicola Yoon

16. “I want to make it so no one and nothing can hurt me ever again. I want to get rid of every nice, kind, sweet, soft feeling inside myself until there’s nothing at all. No joy, but no pain either.”

— Nicola Yoon

17. “I tell her that he thinks I’m funny and smart and beautiful in that order, and that the order matters.”

— Nicola Yoon

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

— Nicola Yoon

19. “We are capable of big lives. A big history. Why settle? Why choose the practical thing, the mundane thing? We are born to dream and make the things we dream about.”

— Nicola Yoon

20. “We’re kindling amid lightning strikes, a lit match and dry wood, fire danger signs and a forest waiting to be burned.”

— Nicola Yoon

21. “Do you ever wonder what your life would be like if you could just change one thing?”

— Nicola Yoon

22. “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.”

— Nicola Yoon

23. “Rejection was like sandpaper. His skin sloughed away under its constant onslaught. After a while, Samuel wasn’t sure which would last long: himself or his dreams.”

— Nicola Yoon

24. “I wish I still felt that way. Growing up and seeing your parents’ flaws is like losing your religion.”

— Nicola Yoon

25. “Do you remember when we read The Little Prince together for the first time? I was so upset that he died in the end. I didn’t understand how he could choose death just so he could get back to his rose. I think I understand it now. He wasn’t choosing to die. His rose was his whole life. Without her, he wasn’t really alive.”

— Nicola Yoon

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

— Nicola Yoon

27. “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.”

— Nicola Yoon

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

— Nicola Yoon

29. “I didn’t know you this morning, and now I don’t remember not knowing you.”

— Nicola Yoon

30. “These days when Patricia looks at her daughter, she doesn’t see as much of herself reflected back as before, and it hurts. But of course, all teenagers do this. All teenagers separate from their parents. To grow up is to grow apart.”

— Nicola Yoon

31. “Why was the boy surprised to find celery growing out of his ears?”

— Nicola Yoon

32. “You don’t exist if no one can see you.”

— Nicola Yoon

33. “Life is a gift don’t forget to live it.”

— Nicola Yoon

34. “Love is worth everything, everything.”

— Nicola Yoon

35. “Am I making a mistake? Maybe. But it’s mine to make.”

— Nicola Yoon

36. “According to multiverse theory, every version of our past and future histories exists, just in an alternate universe. For every event at the quantum level, the current universe splits into multiple universes. This means that for every choice you make, an infinite number of universes exist in which you made a different choice. In this way we get to live multiple lives.”

— Nicola Yoon

37. “Dreaming is a luxury and not everyone has it.”

— Nicola Yoon

38. “Once upon a time there was a girl whose entire life was a lie.”

— Nicola Yoon

39. “I want to say something, not just something, but the perfect thing to comfort him, to make him forget his family for a few minutes, but I can’t think of it. This is why people touch. Sometimes words are just not enough.”

— Nicola Yoon

40. “You can’t predict the future. It turns out that you can’t predict the past either. Time moves in both directions – forward and backward – and what happens here and now changes them both.”

— Nicola Yoon

41. “My guilt is an ocean for me to drown in.”

— Nicola Yoon

42. “He was some exotic planet and I was his favorite satellite. But he’s no planet, just the final fading light of an already dead star. And I’m not a satellite. I’m space junk, hurtling as far as I can away from him.”

— Nicola Yoon

43. “Sometimes the truth can hurt more than you expect.”

— Nicola Yoon

44. “Just because you can’t experience everything doesn’t mean you shouldn’t experience anything.”

— Nicola Yoon

45. “I know there’s no such thing as meant-to-be, and yet here I am wondering if maybe I’ve been wrong.”

— Nicola Yoon

46. “He says they’re not his type, but I don’t really get the concept of having a type. My type is girls. All of them. Why would I limit my dating pool?”

— Nicola Yoon

47. “He said that love and dark matter were the same – the only thing that kept the universe from flying apart.”

— Nicola Yoon

48. “Maybe it’s better to end things this way. Better to have a tragic and sudden end than to have a long, drawn-out one where we realize that we’re just too different, and that love alone is not enough to bind us. I think all these things. I believe none of them.”

— Nicola Yoon

49. “Doesn’t that book always make you cry?” “One day it won’t,” I say. “I want to be sure to be reading it on that day.”

— Nicola Yoon

50. “I am made. I am unmade.”

— Nicola Yoon