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“The first time Olly's dad gets afternoon drunk--violent drunk... He'd been home all day, arguing with financial news shows on television. One of the anchors mentioned the name of his old company, and he raged. He poured whiskey into a tall glass and then added vodka and gin. He mixed them together... until the mixture was no longer the pale amber color of whiskey and looked like water instead. Olly watched the color fade in the glass and remembered the day his dad got fired and how he'd been too afraid to comfort him. What if he had--would things be different now? What if? He remembered how his dad had said that one thing doesn't always lead to another. He remembered sitting at the breakfast bar and stirring the milk and chocolate together. How the chocolate turned white, and the milk turned brown, and how sometimes you can't unmix things no matter how much you might want to.”

“I didn't think I was going to survive. A lot of people don't make it, but I left anyway. I left my father and my mother and my sister and my brother." She rinses the cloth, continues. "They tried to stop me. They said it wasn't worth my life, but I said that it was my life, going to go and either I was going to die or I was going to get a better life...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.”

“Everything happens for a reason. This is a thing people say. My mom says it a lot. "Things happen for a reason, Tasha." Usually people say it when something goes wrong, but not too wrong. A nonfatal car accident. A sprained ankle instead of a broken on. My dad says, "You can't always see God's plan." I want to tell him that maybe he shouldn't leave everything up to God and that hoping against hope is not a life strategy. People say these things to make sense of the world. Secretly, in their heart of hearts, almost everyone believes that there's some meaning, some willfulness to life. Fairness. Basic decency. Good things happen to good people. Bad things only happen to bad people. No one wants to believe that life is random. 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.”

“Jesus. Save me from the nice and sincere boys who feel things too deeply. I still think what happened is funny in its perfect awfulness, but I understand his shame too. It's hard to come from someplace or someone you're not proud of. "You're not your dad," I say, but he doesn't believe me. I understand his fear. Who are we if not a product of our parents and their histories?”

“I dream that I run away from home taking the bot I love with me. I dream that I saw the ocean and it was endless and that I could not find the end of it. I dream that I fall asleep in an unquiet room with the boy that loves me and that I dream that I've run away from home taking the boy I love with me. I dream that I saw the ocean and it was endless and I could not find the end of it. I dream that I fall asleep in an unquiet room and that I dream about the life I'm already living.”

“לפני כמה ימים, כשנועצתי בפלנטריום, כל כך התאמצתי למצוא רגע מפנה שהכווין את כל החיים שלי. רגע שיענה על השאלה, איך הגעתי לכאן? אבל זה אף פעם לא רגע אחד בלבד. זאת סדרה של רגעים. והחיים יכולים להסתעף מכל אחד מהם אלף כיוונים שונים. אולי יש גרסה של החיים שלך לכל אחת מהבחירות שאת עושה, לכל הבחירות שאת לא עושה.”