Yoon Quotes & Sayings

I do my job," Mikodez said, "because after all the trouble I went to get it, it would be irresponsible not to." He — Yoon Ha Lee

You should try it again. The meaning changes every time you read it. — Nicola Yoon

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

We think we want all the time in the world with the people we love, but maybe what we need is the opposite. Just a finite amount of time, so we still think the other person is interesting. Maybe we don't need acts two and three. Maybe love is best in act one. — Nicola Yoon

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. But the poetic heart is not to be trusted. It is fickle and will lead you astray. It will tell you that all you need is love and dreams. It will say nothing about food and water and shelter and money. It will tell you that this person, the one in front of you, the one who caught your eye for whatever reason, is the One. And he is. And she is. The One - for right now, until his heart or her heart decides on someone else or something else. The poetic heart is not to be trusted with long-term decision-making. — Nicola Yoon

I'm trying to see Olly in his darkened room when the Bundt leaps from the sill and plunges to the ground.
I gasp. Did the cake just commit suicide? — Nicola Yoon

It's hard to come for someplace or someone you're not proud of. — Nicola Yoon

I was trying so hard to find the single pivotal moment that set my life on its path. The moment that answered the question, 'How did I get here?'

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

Of course, at some point you had to ask yourself how much legitimacy any government had that feared dissension within more than invasion from without, but — Yoon Ha Lee

If I could, I would kiss him every second of every day. For all the days. — Nicola Yoon

A Tale of Two Kisses. To Kiss a Mockingbird. As I Lay Kissing. — Nicola Yoon

This is the life you're living. It's not temporary and it's not pretend and there's no do-over. — Nicola Yoon

oh jesus. that is not a good joke Madeline: Made you smile though. Olly: yeah it did — Nicola Yoon

It was summer here and he wondered if there existed a different season for every corner of this world in this moment and the moments to come. Whether if you traveled fast and far enough you could witness a year passing in a single journey. — Paul Yoon

Maybe part of falling in love with someone else is also falling in love with yourself. — Nicola Yoon

When you're born, they (God or little aliens or whoever) should send you into the world with a bunch of free passes. — Nicola Yoon

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

Life is a gift. Don't forget to live it. — Nicola Yoon

Beware the Queen of Hearts. She'll have your head. — Nicola Yoon

It's not that Natasha wants to let Daniel go; it's that she has to let go. It isn't possible for her to live in two worlds simultaneously, heart in one place, body in another. She lets go of Daniel to avoid being ripped apart. — Nicola Yoon

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

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

You can do every goddamn thing right, and your life can still turn to shit. — Nicola Yoon

Did your parents care that he was white?"
"They never met him." I couldn't imagine taking him to meet my dad. Watching them talk to each other would've been tortuous. Also, I never wanted him to see how small our apartment was. In the end, I guess I really didn't want him to know me.
With Daniel, it's different somehow. I want him to see all of me. — Nicola Yoon

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

It's not up to you to help other people fit you into a box. — Nicola Yoon

How am I suppose 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? — Nicola Yoon

To grow up is to grow apart. — Nicola Yoon

You can learn about how people think by playing with their lives, but that's inhumane. — Yoon Ha Lee

He leans his forehead against mine. His breath is warm against my nose and cheeks. It's slightly sweet. The kind of sweet that makes you want more. — Nicola Yoon

Love makes people crazy. Loss of love makes people crazy. — Nicola Yoon

Observable Fact: You should never take long shots. Better to study the odds and take the probable shot. However, if the long shot is your only shot, then you have to take it. — Nicola Yoon

The city lies at the galaxy's dust-stranded edge, enfolding a moon that used to be a world, or a world that used to be a moon; no one is certain anymore. In the mornings its skies are radiant with clouds like the plumage of a bird ever-rising, and in the evenings the stars scatter light across skies stitched and unstitched by the comings and goings of fire-winged starships. Its walls are made of metal the color of undyed silk, and its streets bloom with aleatory lights, small solemn symphonies, the occasional duel. — Yoon Ha Lee

For most immigrants, moving to the new country is an act of faith. Even if you've heard stories of safety, opportunity, and prosperity, it's still a leap to remove yourself from your own language, people, and country. Your own history. What if the stories weren't true? What if you couldn't adapt? What if you weren't wanted in the new country? — Nicola Yoon

Practicality is overrated. — Nicola Yoon

(Cabbages were a Kel idiosyncrasy. They were adamant about their spiced cabbage pickles.) Appearance-wise — Yoon Ha Lee

In my head I know I've been in love before, but it doesn't feel like it. 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

I'm going to do whatever the world tells me to. I'm going to act like I'm in a goddamn Bob Dylan song and blow in the direction of the wind. I'm going to pretend my future's wide open, and that anything can happen. — Nicola Yoon

Girls are always getting mad at each other and they tell their hairdresser to purposely mess up another girl's hair. — Yoon Mi-rae

Just because it's the first time doesn't make it less real, does it? Even the universe has a beginning. — Nicola Yoon

It's not a competition if one person can't even show up for the event. — Nicola Yoon

I could stay here forever interrupting our talking with kissing, interrupting our kissing with talking. — Nicola Yoon

We still have to wait. The situation will repeat, we will get tired, but as long as we don't let go of each other's hand, then one day they will recognize that we are one. — Yoon Joon-soo

One line on the arm, one line on the heart. The bastards who stood by my side with two lines. They'll be the hardest farewells I'll have to make in my life and they're the luckiest fortune I've met in my lifetime. — Choi Yoon-young

Why was the boy surprised to find celery growing out of his ears? — Nicola Yoon

One day I will write an ode about kissing. I will call it "Ode to a Kiss".

It will be epic. — Nicola Yoon

The Kel unsheathed their swords, each tinted differently, blank bars of light. Cheris's ran from blue near the hilt to red at the tip. As they closed with the enemy, numbers blazed to life along the lengths of the blades: the day and the hour of your death, as the Kel liked to say. — Yoon Ha Lee

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

The archtraitor and madman Shuos Jedao had appeared as a Ninefox Crowned with Eyes, visionary and strategist, but had proved to be an Immolation Fox. — Yoon Ha Lee

your world can change in a single moment. — Nicola Yoon

His words made me aware that the heart in my chest is a muscle like any other. It can hurt. — Nicola Yoon

For the first time in a long time, I want more than I have. — Nicola Yoon

Charlie and Daniel think money and happiness are not related. They don't know what poor is. They don't know that poverty is a sharp knife carving away at you. They don't know what it does to a body. To a mind. — Nicola Yoon

I kiss him to get him to stop talking. If he keeps talking I will love him, and I don't want to love him. I really don't. As strategies go, it's not my finest. Kissing is just another way of talking except without the words. — Nicola Yoon

Trying not to smile only makes you smile more. — Nicola Yoon

I realize I didn't like you. I just wanted to meet someone that understood me. I didn't know that you were speaking from the diary. I had mistaken it for love. — Jo Yoon-hee

My heart's been on my sleeve all day, and it's pretty bruised up right now. — Nicola Yoon

Q: Will I encounter turbulence?
A: Yes. Into all lives a little turbulence must fall. — Nicola Yoon

once lived a girl in a bubble who i suspected was nothing but trouble still i gave her my heart but she blew it apart and left me with nothing but rubble — Nicola Yoon

Standing there, in his father's shed, he knew that there had been, between them, affection and even tenderness. That his father had never been unkind. That in their silences there had been a form of love. But he had never known him, had never been close to him in the way he witnessed other sons and their fathers. — Paul Yoon

Every time I see you, I feel like I'm waiting for the other shoe to fall. I feel uncomfortable every time I see you, and every time we talk, my throat tickles. — Yoon Joon-soo

We're kindling amid lightning strikes, a lit match and dry wood, fire danger signs and a forest waiting to be burned. — Nicola Yoon

Maybe growing up means disappointing the people we love. — Nicola Yoon

Dead is dead, Cheris. Do you think it makes any difference whether you're killed by a knife in the back or a bullet? — Yoon Ha Lee

From so high above it, the world seems ordered and deliberate.

But I know it's more than that. And less. It is structured and chaotic. Beautiful and strange. — Nicola Yoon

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

This country can't have everything. — Nicola Yoon

I wonder if she realizes how passionate she is about not being passionate. — Nicola Yoon

He thinks my hair smells like spring rain. 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

When Natasha thinks about love, this is what she thinks: nothing lasts forever. Like hydrogen-7 or lithium-5 or boron-7, love has an infinitesimally small half-life that decays to nothing. And when its gone, its like it was never there at all. — Nicola Yoon

Blue stands for many things at the end of time: for the forgotten, blazing blue stars of aeons past; the antithesis of redshift, the color of uncut veins beneath your skin.
This story is written in blue ink, although you do not know that yet. — Yoon Ha Lee

I could reach out and take her hand, force the issue, but I want her to be the one to do it this time. I want her to acknowledge this thing between us out loud. I can't leave well enough alone. I want her to say the words. We're meant to be. Something. Anything. I need to hear them. To know that I'm not alone in this.
I should let it go.
I am going to let it go.
'What are you so afraid of?' I ask, not letting it go at all. — Nicola Yoon

He thought of these years as another life within the one he had. As though it were a thing he was able to carry. A small box. A handkerchief. A stone. — Paul Yoon

I only see things that I shouldn't have done when I watch my film again. — Lee Yoon-ki

love: a chemical history.
...The second stage, attraction, is governed by dopamine and serotonin. When, for example, couples report feeling indescribably happy in each other's presence, that's dopamine, the pleasure hormone, doing its work.
Taking cocaine fosters the same level of euphoria. In fact, scientists who study both the brains of new lovers and cocaine addicts are hard-pressed to tell the difference. — Nicola Yoon

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

It seems like such a long time ago when I thought the world of him. 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

In space there are no seasons, and this is as true of the ships that cross the distances between humanity's far-flung homes. But we measure our seasons anyway: by a smile, a silence, a song. — Yoon Ha Lee

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

You can find the meaning of life in a book. — Nicola Yoon

It's better to see life as it is, not as you wish it to be. Things don't happen for a reason. They just happen. — Nicola Yoon

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. — Nicola Yoon

For my mom and dad, who taught me about dreams and how to catch them — Nicola Yoon

I don't want to worry anymore thinking about the future. Mi Rae ... 'Mi' meaning not yet. 'Rae' meaning coming. Why should I decide on the present, thinking about the future that's not here yet? I won't do that anymore. — Yoon Mi-rae

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

My guilt is an ocean for me to drown in. — Nicola Yoon

He's trying not to laugh, but the telltale dimple gives it away. — Nicola Yoon

It's hard trying to hold on to a place that doesn't want you. — Nicola Yoon

Ocean: The endless part of yourself you never knew but always suspected was there.
-Madeline (Madeline's Dictionary) — Nicola Yoon

I don't know how to live." "But you do," she said. "It's all about the distinguishing moments. It's about going from one to the next, no matter how small the interval of time, or how long. — Yoon Ha Lee

Wanting leads to more wanting. Desire has no end. — Nicola Yoon

MY MOM SAYS IT'S TIME for me to give up now, and that what I'm doing is futile. She's upset, so her accent is thicker than usual, and every statement is a question. "You no think is time for you to give up now, Tasha? You no think that what you doing is futile?" She draws out the first syllable of futile for a second too long. My dad doesn't say anything. He's mute with anger or impotence. I'm never sure which. His frown is so deep and so complete that it's hard to imagine his face with another expression. If this were even just a few months ago, I'd be sad to see him like this, but now I don't really care. He's the reason we're all in this mess. — Nicola Yoon

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

Area Teen Pretty Sure Day Can't Get Worse, Is Wrong About That — Nicola Yoon

The way people respond to struggles or express their feelings in difficult situations are very different. I like imagining how characters would react in certain situations. — Lee Yoon-ki

One night, returning to the house, he went into his father's shed. He stared at the unsold pots and the vases on the shelves, at their shapes and their designs, the illustrations of landscapes. He wondered what would become of them. He reached for one, then hesitated. He thought of them staying here, untouched, through the seasons and the years. He thought of the ones people had purchased, scattered throughout the country. He imagined that somewhere underneath the glaze and the paint there remained his father's hands. That they contained the heat of a kiln and a home that no longer existed. He wondered whether he would be able to recognize them if he saw them again. — Paul Yoon

I was happy before I met him. But I'm alive now, and those are not the same thing. — Nicola Yoon

It was as though someone, somewhere, were dreaming this and he had crossed into it without permission. Everything both familiar and foreign. — Paul Yoon

There's no denying it now. I'm in the world. And, too, the world is in me. — Nicola Yoon

It's a long life to spend doing something you're only meh about. — Nicola Yoon