Top 500 Nicola Yoon Quotes (2026 Update)
Page 6 of 10

251. “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

252. “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

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

— Nicola Yoon

254. “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

255. “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

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

— Nicola Yoon

257. “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

258. “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

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

— Nicola Yoon

260. “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

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

— Nicola Yoon

262. “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

263. “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

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

— Nicola Yoon

265. “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

266. “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

267. “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

268. “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

269. “If my life were a book and you read it backward, nothing would change. Today is the same as yesterday. Tomorrow will be the same as today. In.”

— Nicola Yoon

270. “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

271. “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

272. “You can’t persuade someone to love you.”

— Nicola Yoon

273. “What do I regret? That I went outside in the first place. That I saw and fell in love with the world. That I fell in love with Olly.”

— Nicola Yoon

274. “She hates not knowing what happens next. Uncertainty is her enemy.”

— Nicola Yoon

275. “I love this part of getting to know someone. How every new piece of information, every new expression, seems magical. I can’t imagine this becoming old and boring. I can’t imagine not wanting to hear what she has to say.”

— Nicola Yoon

276. “Sometimes words are just not enough.”

— Nicola Yoon

277. “You can miss the future with people who are still alive too.”

— Nicola Yoon

278. “Isn’t growing apart a part of growing up?”

— Nicola Yoon

279. “Spoiler alert: Everything is nothing.”

— Nicola Yoon

280. “He bumps me lightly with his shoulder and then steadies me with his hand on my back. I like the feel of his hand so much that I speed up a little to avoid it.”

— Nicola Yoon

281. “Happiness is tricky. Sometimes you have to fight for it. Sometimes, though – the best times – it sneaks up behind you, wraps an arm around your waist and pulls you close.”

— Nicola Yoon

282. “Who knew you were this stubborn?” Not me. I didn’t know I was this stubborn.”

— Nicola Yoon

283. “It’s not decent to be good at everything. Three or four things at the most. Even that is pushing the bounds of good taste.”

— Nicola Yoon

284. “He smiles and doesn’t try to keep any of the sadness off his face. How can he be so okay with showing off his heart?”

— Nicola Yoon

285. “Natasha knows that if she has to leave America, all her friendships, even with Bev, will fade. Sure, they’ll try to stay in touch at the beginning, but it won’t be the same as seeing each other every day.”

— Nicola Yoon

286. “Love Triangle... They exist so the main character can choose between different versions of themselves: who they used to be and who they’re still becoming.”

— Nicola Yoon

287. “Should I tell him that I think dreams never die even when they’re dead?”

— Nicola Yoon

288. “Her world is bigger than him and the things he taught her to be interested in. He doesn’t know when she outgrew him.”

— Nicola Yoon

289. “However, if the long shot is your only shot, then you have to take it.”

— Nicola Yoon

290. “Infinite. The state of not knowing where one body ends and another begins.”

— Nicola Yoon

291. “She gave her son an American name followed by a Korean personal name followed by the family name. She named him Charles Jae Won Bae. She named her second son Daniel Jae Ho Bae. In the end, she chose both. Korean and American. American and Korean. So they would know where they were from. So they would know where they were going.”

— Nicola Yoon

292. “He tastes like salted caramel and sunshine. Or what I think salted caramel and sunshine taste like. He tastes like nothing I’ve ever experienced, like hope and possibility and future.”

— Nicola Yoon

293. “Desperation translates into every language.”

— Nicola Yoon

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

— Nicola Yoon

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

— Nicola Yoon

296. “It amazes me that people spend their entire days inside places like this doing things they don’t love for people they don’t like.”

— Nicola Yoon

297. “I’m not usually a stalker, and I’m not following her, exactly. I’m maintaining a noncreepy, half-block distance between us.”

— Nicola Yoon

298. “Our bodies are having their own conversation separate and apart from us.”

— Nicola Yoon

299. “All of which isn’t to say that Jeremy Fitzgerald did the right thing or the wrong thing. It’s only to say this: love always changes everything.”

— Nicola Yoon

300. “His words made me aware that the heart in my chest is a muscle like any other. It can hurt.”

— Nicola Yoon