Quotes from Everything, Everything

Nicola Yoon ·  307 pages

Rating: (214.6K votes)


“Everything's a risk. Not doing anything is a risk. It's up to you.”
― Nicola Yoon, quote from Everything, Everything


“Maybe growing up means disappointing the people we love.”
― Nicola Yoon, quote from Everything, Everything


Spoiler alert: Love is worth everything. Everything.”
― Nicola Yoon, quote from Everything, Everything


“Life is a gift. Don't forget to live it.”
― Nicola Yoon, quote from Everything, Everything


“Just because you can’t experience everything doesn’t mean you shouldn’t experience anything.”
― Nicola Yoon, quote from Everything, Everything



“Sometimes I reread my favorite books from back to front. I start with the last chapter and read backward until I get to the beginning. When you read this way, characters go from hope to despair, from self-knowledge to doubt. In love stories, couples start out as lovers and end as strangers. Coming-of-age books become stories of losing your way. Your favorite characters come back to life.”
― Nicola Yoon, quote from Everything, Everything


“You're not living if you're not regretting.”
― Nicola Yoon, quote from Everything, Everything


“I was happy before I met him. But I’m alive now, and those are not the same thing.”
― Nicola Yoon, quote from Everything, Everything


“prom·ise (ˈpräməs) n. pl. - es. 1. The lie you want to keep. [2015, Whittier]”
― Nicola Yoon, quote from Everything, Everything


“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, quote from Everything, Everything



“It's a hard concept to hold on to--the idea that there was a time before us. A time before time.

In the beginning there was nothing. And then there was everything.”
― Nicola Yoon, quote from Everything, Everything


“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, quote from Everything, Everything


“You can do every goddamn thing right, and your life can still turn to shit.”
― Nicola Yoon, quote from Everything, Everything


“Wanting just leads to more wanting. There’s no end to desire.”
― Nicola Yoon, quote from Everything, Everything


“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, quote from Everything, Everything



“My guilt is an ocean for me to drown in.”
― Nicola Yoon, quote from Everything, Everything


“What colour are your eyes?
Olly (O): blue
Madeline (M): Be more specific please
O: jesus. girls. ocean blue
M: Atlantic or Pacific
O: atlantic. What colour are yours?
M: Chocolate brown.
O: More specific please
M: 75% cacao butter, dark chocolate brown
O: hehe. nice”
― Nicola Yoon, quote from Everything, Everything


“I've read many more books than you. It doesn't matter how many you've read. I've read more. Believe me.”
― Nicola Yoon, quote from Everything, Everything


“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. In two weeks my skin will have no memory of Olly’s hand on mine, but my brain will remember. We can have immortality or the memory of touch. But we can’t have both.”
― Nicola Yoon, quote from Everything, Everything


“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, quote from Everything, Everything



“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, quote from Everything, Everything


“For the first time in a long time, I want more than I have.”
― Nicola Yoon, quote from Everything, Everything


“There's more to life than being alive.”
― Nicola Yoon, quote from Everything, Everything


“Here is my secret. It’s quite simple: One sees clearly only with the heart. Anything essential is invisible to the eyes.”
― Nicola Yoon, quote from Everything, Everything


“as•ymp•tote (ˈasəm(p)ˌtōt) n. pl. -s. 1. A wish that continually approaches but never achieves fulfillment. [2015, Whittier]”
― Nicola Yoon, quote from Everything, Everything



“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, quote from Everything, Everything


“Ocean: The endless part of yourself you never knew but always suspected was there.
-Madeline (Madeline's Dictionary)”
― Nicola Yoon, quote from Everything, Everything


“My heart is too bruised and I want to keep the pain as a reminder. I don't want sunlight on it. I don't want it to heal. Because if it does, I might be tempted to use it again.”
― Nicola Yoon, quote from Everything, Everything


“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 the book of Maddy, all the chapters are the same.
Until Olly.”
― Nicola Yoon, quote from Everything, Everything


“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, quote from Everything, Everything



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About the author

Nicola Yoon
Born place: Jamaica
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“. . . besides love, independence of thought is the greatest gift an adult can give a child.”
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“Once upon a time,” I began. “There was a little boy born in a little town. He was perfect, or so his mother thought. But one thing was different about him. He had a gold screw in his belly button. Just the head of it peeping out.
“Now his mother was simply glad he had all his fingers and toes to count with. But as the boy grew up he realized not everyone had screws in their belly buttons, let alone gold ones. He asked his mother what it was for, but she didn’t know. Next he asked his father, but his father didn’t know. He asked his grandparents, but they didn’t know either.
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“He went from place to place, asking everyone who claimed to know something about anything. He asked midwives and physickers, but they couldn’t make heads or tails of it. The boy asked arcanists, tinkers, and old hermits living in the woods, but no one had ever seen anything like it.
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I paused to take a long drink of water. I could feel my small audience leaning toward me. “Then the
high king carefully turned the golden screw. Once: Nothing. Twice: Nothing. Then he turned it the third time, and the boy’s ass fell off.”
There was a moment of stunned silence.
“What?” Hespe asked incredulously.
“His ass fell off.”
― Patrick Rothfuss, quote from The Wise Man's Fear


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