The voices / 68 fragments

Nicola Yoon

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Archive entries

01Undated

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

Nicola Yoon / quote

02Undated

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

03Undated

Everything's a risk. Not doing anything is a risk. It's up to you.

Nicola Yoon / quote

04Undated

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

Nicola Yoon / quote

05Undated

Names are powerful things.

Nicola Yoon / quote

06Undated

What are we talking about again?” he asks.I say science at the same time that he says love, and we both laugh.“What are the ingredients?” he prompts me again.“Mutual self-interest and socioeconomic compatibility.”“Do you even have a soul?”“No such thing as a soul,” I say.

Nicola Yoon / quote

07Undated

I've never understood the phrase they have chemistry before now. After all, everything is chemistry. Everything is combination and reaction. The atoms in by body align themselves with the atoms in his.

Nicola Yoon / quote

08Undated

According to scientists, there are three stages of love: lust, attraction, and attachment. And, it turns out, each of the stages is orchestrated by chemicals—neurotransmitters—in the brain.As you might expect, lust is ruled by testosterone and estrogen.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.The second chemical of the attraction phase is serotonin. When couples confess that they can’t stop thinking about each other, it’s because their serotonin level has dropped. People in love have the same low serotonin levels as people with OCD. The reason they can’t stop thinking about each other is that they are literally obsessed.Oxytocin and vasopressin control the third stage: attachment or long-term bonding. Oxytocin is released during orgasm and makes you feel closer to the person you’ve had sex with. It’s also released during childbirth and helps bond mother to child. Vasopressin is released postcoitally.Natasha knows these facts cold. Knowing them helped her get over Rob’s betrayal. So she knows: love is just chemicals and coincidence.So why does Daniel feel like something more?

Nicola Yoon / quote

09Undated

Dark matter is love. It's the attracting force.

Nicola Yoon / quote

10Undated

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

11Undated

Olly: jesus. is there a girl on this planet who doesn't love mr.darcyMadeline: All girls love Mr. Darcy?Olly: are you kidding? even my sister loves darcy and she doesn't love anybodyMadeline: She must love somebody. I'm sure she loves youOlly: what's so great about darcy?Madeline: That's not a serious questionOlly: he's a snobMadeline: But he overcomes it and eventually realizes that character matters more than class! He's a man open to learning life's lessons! Also, he's completely gorgeous and noble and brooding and poetic. Did I mention gorgeous? Also, he loves Elizabeth beyond all reason.

Nicola Yoon / quote

12Undated

Flowers for Algernon again? she asks. Doesn't that book always make you cry?One day it won't, I say. I want to be sure to be reading it on that day.

Nicola Yoon / quote

13Undated

How can he not share his newfound joy with his fellow man? And it is joy. There’s a pure kind of joy in the certainty of belief. The certainty that your life has purpose and meaning.

Nicola Yoon / quote

14Undated

Should I tell him that I think dreams never die even when they're dead?

Nicola Yoon / quote

15Undated

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.

Nicola Yoon / quote

16Undated

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 / quote

17Undated

CARL SAGAN SAID that if you want to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe. When he says “from scratch,” he means fromnothing. He means from a time before the world even existed. If you want to make an apple pie from nothing at all, you have to start with the Big Bang and expanding universes, neutrons, ions, atoms, black holes, suns, moons, ocean tides, the Milky Way, Earth, evolution, dinosaurs, extinction- level events, platypuses,Homo erectus, Cro- Magnon man, etc. You have to start at the beginning. You must invent fire. You need water and fertile soil and seeds. You need cows and people to milk them and more people to churn that milk into butter. You need wheat and sugar cane and apple trees. You need chemistry and biology. For a really good apple pie, you need the arts. For an apple pie that can last for generations, you need the printing press and the Industrial Revolution and maybe even a poem.To make a thing as simple as an apple pie, you have to create the whole wide world.

Nicola Yoon / quote

18Undated

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

Nicola Yoon / quote

19Undated

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 / quote

20Undated

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

Nicola Yoon / quote

21Undated

Words, Natasha thinks, should behave more like units of measure. A meter is a meter is a meter. Words shouldn't be allowed to change meanings. Who decides that the meaning has changed, and when? Is there an in-between time when the word means both things? Or a time when the word doesn't mean anything at all?

Nicola Yoon / quote

22Undated

But can you trust something that can end as suddenly as it begins?

Nicola Yoon / quote

23Undated

And what about the lovers who spend hours staring into each other's eyes? Is it a display of trust? 'I will let you in close and trust you not to hurt me while I'm in this vulnerable position.' And if trust is one of the foundations of love, perhaps the staring is a way to build or reinforce it. Or maybe it's simpler than that.A simple search for connectionTo see.To be seen.

Nicola Yoon / quote

24Undated

How can you trust something that can end as suddenly as it begins?

Nicola Yoon / quote