Top 500 Nicola Yoon Quotes (2026 Update)
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251. “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

252. “I want to fall in love, with an emphasis on the falling part.”

— Nicola Yoon

253. “It’s soothing to see an entire world at once-to see the pieces and know how it all fits together.”

— Nicola Yoon

254. “I tell you, when I left my house that night I never felt more free. Even now, in all the time that I’ve been here, I never felt as free as that night.”

— Nicola Yoon

255. “According to scientists, there are three stages of love: lust, attraction, and attachment. And, it turns out, each of the stages is orchestrated by chemicals – neurotransmitters – in the brain.”

— Nicola Yoon

256. “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

257. “My butterflies are rioting.”

— Nicola Yoon

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

— Nicola Yoon

259. “Maybe we don’t need acts two and three. Maybe love is best in act one.”

— Nicola Yoon

260. “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

261. “But you believe in something?” She frowns, uncertain. “I really don’t know. I guess I’m more interested in why people feel like they have to believe in God. Why can’t it just be science? Science is wondrous. The night sky? Amazing. The inside of a human cell? Incredible. Something that tells us we’re born bad and that people use to justify all their petty prejudices and awfulness? I dunno. I guess I believe in science. Science is enough.”

— Nicola Yoon

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

— Nicola Yoon

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

— Nicola Yoon

264. “But it’s never just one moment. It’s a series of them. And your life can branch out from each one in a thousand different ways. Maybe there’s a version of your life for all the choices you make and all the choices you don’t.”

— Nicola Yoon

265. “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

266. “Boys come and go, but mothers are forever.”

— Nicola Yoon

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

— Nicola Yoon

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

— Nicola Yoon

269. “Because everything looks like chaos up close. Daniel thinks it’s a matter of scale. If you pull back far enough and wait for long enough, then order emerges.”

— Nicola Yoon

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

— Nicola Yoon

271. “I’m really trying to remain stoic and unaffected. I remind myself that I don’t like poetic language. I don’t like poetry. I don’t even like people who like poetry. But I’m not dead inside either.”

— Nicola Yoon

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

— Nicola Yoon

273. “Time stumbles back into place. The plane and the seats reform. The passengers solidify into flesh. And blood. And bone. And heart.”

— Nicola Yoon

274. “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

275. “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

276. “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

277. “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

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

— Nicola Yoon

279. “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

280. “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

281. “When I first started with you I thought it was only a matter of time before depression would take you over. And there was that one summer when it came close, but it didn’t happen. Every day you get up and learn something new. Every day you find something to be happy about. Every single day you have a smile for me.”

— Nicola Yoon

282. “He’s trying not to laugh, but the telltale dimple gives it away.”

— Nicola Yoon

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

— Nicola Yoon

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

— Nicola Yoon

285. “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

286. “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

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

— Nicola Yoon

288. “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

289. “And when it’s gone, it’s like it was never there at all.”

— Nicola Yoon

290. “You’re afraid of becoming your dad. You don’t want to choose the wrong thing, so you don’t choose anything at all.”

— Nicola Yoon

291. “Maybe it does bother me,′ he says, ’but only peripherally. It’s like a buzzing fly, you know? Annoying, but not actually life-threatening.”

— Nicola Yoon

292. “People feel so much. Love is so big and it leaves behind a crater. Even when it’s wrong.”

— Nicola Yoon

293. “He tells me that high school is no utopia, but I’m not convinced. What else would you call a place that exists solely to teach you about the world? What do you call a place with friends and teachers and libraries and book club and math club and debate club and any other kind of club and after-school activities and endless possibilities?”

— Nicola Yoon

294. “Studies have shown that the pupils of people who are attracted to each other dilate from the presence of dopamine. Other studies suggest that threads in the eye can indicate personality tendencies, and that maybe eyes are a kind of window to the soul after all.”

— Nicola Yoon

295. “Touching him is order and chaos, like being assembled and disassembled at the same time.”

— Nicola Yoon

296. “I decide then that love is a terrible, terrible thing. Loving someone as fiercely as my mom loves me must be like wearing your heart outside of your body with no skin, no bones, no nothing to protect it.”

— Nicola Yoon

297. “I love how simple this is for her. I love that her solution to everything is to tell the truth. I struggle with my identity and she tells me just to say what’s true.”

— Nicola Yoon

298. “He holds his hands up like he’s defending himself, like he’s trying to push the words in the air back into me.”

— Nicola Yoon

299. “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

300. “We are lips and arms and legs and bodies entangled. He raises himself above me and we are wordless, and then we are joined and moving silently. We are joined and I know all of the secrets of the universe.”

— Nicola Yoon