Top 500 Nicola Yoon Quotes (2026 Update)
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201. “If all the cells in our body did this, we’d be immortal. But some of our cells, like the ones in our brains, don’t renew. They age, and age us.”

— Nicola Yoon

202. “Being alone with her in a dimly lit room is a little bit of heaven.”

— Nicola Yoon

203. “There are entire worlds that exist just beneath our notice of them.”

— Nicola Yoon

204. “To make a thing as simple as an apple pie, you have to create the whole wide world.”

— Nicola Yoon

205. “How is it possible to have an emotion and its opposite at the same time?”

— Nicola Yoon

206. “Some prescient part of him saw the two paths diverging in the yellow wood. Maybe if he’d chosen the other path, if he’d left the store instead of stayed, it would’ve made all the difference.”

— Nicola Yoon

207. “Does he really need me to tell him that all the seconds matter? That our own universe exploded into existence in the space of a breath?”

— Nicola Yoon

208. “Do you think it’s funny that both of our favorite memories are about the people we like the least now?” I ask. “Maybe that’s why we dislike them,” she says. “The distance between who they were and who they are is so wide, we have no hope of getting them back.”

— Nicola Yoon

209. “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.”

— Nicola Yoon

210. “Chaos theory says that even a small change in initial conditions can lead to wildly unpredictable results. A butterfly flaps her wings now and a hurricane forms in the future. Still. I think if I could just find the moment, I could take it apart piece by piece, molecule by molecule, until I got down to the atomic level, until I got to the part that was inviolate and essential. If I could take it apart and understand it then maybe I could make just exactly the right change.”

— Nicola Yoon

211. “The problem is chaos theory. There are too many inputs to the formula and even the small ones matter more than you think. And you can never measure them precisely enough. But! If you could, you could write a formula to predict the weather, the future, people.”

— Nicola Yoon

212. “We look at each other and laugh for no reason. Or, not for no reason, but because the world just then seems extraordinary. For us to have met, to have fallen in love, to get to be together is beyond anything either of us had ever thought possible.”

— Nicola Yoon

213. “And she’s not wrong.”

— Nicola Yoon

214. “The problem with broken hearts isn’t that they kill you. It’s that they don’t.”

— Nicola Yoon

215. “Couples in love believe they’ll always be in love. It’s one of the ways you know you’re in love in the first place.”

— Nicola Yoon

216. “Here is my secret. It’s quite simple: One sees clearly only with the heart. Anything essential is invisible to the eyes.”

— Nicola Yoon

217. “Stories help shape the way we see ourselves in the world. They help tell us who we can be and what we can achieve.”

— Nicola Yoon

218. “When I was younger, one of my favorite activities was imagining alternative-universe versions of myself. Sometimes I was a rosy-cheeked outdoorsy girl who ate flowers and hiked alone, uphill, for miles. Or I was a skydiving, drag-racing, adrenaline-fueled daredevil. Or a chain mail-wearing, sword swinging dragon slayer. It was fun to imagine those things because I already knew who I was. Now I don’t know anything. I don’t know who I’m supposed to be in my new world.”

— Nicola Yoon

219. “Having dreams never killed anybody.”

— Nicola Yoon

220. “And now my life doesn’t make sense anymore. I almost wish I hadn’t met him. 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.”

— Nicola Yoon

221. “It’s not that Daniel wants to let Natasha go. He holds on for as long as he can. But he hearts the strain in her voice across the distance. In her new accent, he hears the cadence of her slipping away from him.”

— Nicola Yoon

222. “My butterflies are rioting.”

— Nicola Yoon

223. “It’s like knowing all the word to a song but still finding them beautiful and surprising.”

— Nicola Yoon

224. “Mom said just because a thing ends doesn’t make the thing any less real. Just because everything is different now doesn’t mean we didn’t love each other once. Maybe we will again.”

— Nicola Yoon

225. “This is the life you’re living. It’s not temporary, it’s not pretend, and there’s no do-over.”

— Nicola Yoon

226. “Who are we if not a product of our parents and their histories?”

— Nicola Yoon

227. “Once they met, the rest of it, the love between them, was inevitable.”

— Nicola Yoon

228. “Sometimes you do things for the right reasons and sometimes for the wrong ones and sometimes it’s impossible to tell the difference.”

— Nicola Yoon

229. “You can get lost in you own mind, like you gone to another country. All you thoughts in another language and you can’t read the signs even though they everywhere all around you.”

— Nicola Yoon

230. “In Cobain’s lyrics she finally finds the words. She writes a suicide note addressed to no one: “Oh well. Whatever. Nevermind.”

— Nicola Yoon

231. “Some things you just have to experience for yourself.”

— Nicola Yoon

232. “You should try it again. The meaning changes every time you read it.”

— Nicola Yoon

233. “It’s not your fault. Life is a gift. Don’t forget to live it.”

— Nicola Yoon

234. “You listened to Bob Marley, and a bartender got you some pot, and someone told you what irie means, and you think you know something. You saw a tiki bar and a beach and your hotel room. That is not a country. That is a resort.”

— Nicola Yoon

235. “Being in love with you is better than the first time. It feels like the first time and the last time and the only time all at once.”

— Nicola Yoon

236. “We are programmed to plan ahead. It’s part of our rhythm. The sun rises every day and defers to the moon every night.”

— Nicola Yoon

237. “I READ ONCE that, on average, we replace the majority of our cells every seven years. Even more amazing: We change the upper layers of our skin every two weeks. If all the cells in our body did this, we’d be immortal. But some of our cells, like the ones in our brains, don’t renew. They age, and age us.”

— Nicola Yoon

238. “Maya Angelou wrote in Human Family, “We are more alike, my friends, than we are unalike.”

— Nicola Yoon

239. “It was beautiful. But it was sad too. Both things, and at the same time. I don’t know why so much of life is like that.”

— Nicola Yoon

240. “What does it mean to wear your hair natural versus straightened? Is straightening your hair a form of self-hatred? Does it mean you think your hair in its natural state is not beautiful? If you wear your hair naturally, are you making a political statement, claiming black power?”

— Nicola Yoon

241. “One of the hazards of having friends, especially long time ones, is just how well they know you.”

— Nicola Yoon

242. “He thinks of poverty as a kind of contagion, and he doesn’t want them to hear about it lest they catch it.”

— Nicola Yoon

243. “If people who were actually born here had to prove they were worthy enough to live in America, this would be a much less populated country.”

— Nicola Yoon

244. “Dark matter is love. It’s the attracting force.”

— Nicola Yoon

245. “I’m glad you think this is funny,” he says. “Come on,” I say. “Tragedy is funny.” “Are we in a tragedy?” he asks, smiling broadly now. “Of course. Isn’t that what life is? We all die at the end.”

— Nicola Yoon

246. “We can have immortality or the memory of touch. But we can’t have both.”

— Nicola Yoon

247. “Maybe we can’t predict everything, 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.”

— Nicola Yoon

248. “Everything’s different and the same. I’m still Maddy. Olly’s still Olly. But we’re both more somehow. I know him in a new way. And I feel known, too.”

— Nicola Yoon

249. “A photograph is a kind of time machine.”

— Nicola Yoon

250. “I once told Olly that I knew my our heart better than I knew anything else, and it’s still true. I know the places in my heart, but the names have all changed.”

— Nicola Yoon