Nicola Yoon

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.

Everything's a risk. Not doing anything is a risk.

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.

seriously. __ust because you can__ experience everything doesn__ mean you shouldn__ experience anything.-Nicola Yoon, Everything, Everything

I__ kind of a contagion cryer. You know how when one person starts yawning, everyone else starts yawning too? Or when someone vomits, the smell makes you want to hurl? I__ like that, except with crying.

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.

But I like my big Afro. I also liked when my hair was longer and relaxed. I__ happy to have choices. They__e mine to make

Hearts don__ break.It__ just another thing the poets say.Hearts are not madeOf glassOr boneOr any material that couldSplinterOr FragmentOr Shatter.They don__Crack Into Pieces.They don__Fall Apart.Hearts don__ break.They just stop working.An old watch from another time and no parts to fix it.

I know she's just trying to protect me, just as I was to protect myself a few short weeks ago, but her words make me aware that the heart in my chest is a muscles like any other. It can hurt.

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.

o_cean (__SH_n) n. pl. -s. 1. The endless part of yourself you never knew but always suspected was there. [2015, Whittier]

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

Observable Fact: I don__ believe in magic.Observable Fact: We are magic.

Do you think it__ funny that both of our favorite memories are about the people we like the least now?_ I ask.__aybe that__ why we dislike them,_ she says. __he distance between who they were and who they are is so wide, we have no hope of getting them back.

A photograph is a kind of time machine.

Yay, science.