Everything, Everything

by Nicola Yoon

Here is my secret. It’s quite simple: One sees clearly only with the heart. Anything essential is invisible to the eyes.

Maybe I’m holding out hope that one day, someday, things will change.

“Life is hard, honey. Everyone finds a way.”

shoulder. “Everything’s a risk. Not doing anything is a risk. It’s up to you.”

“Just because you can’t experience everything doesn’t mean you shouldn’t experience anything.

AND IT’S THE wanting that pulls me back down to earth hard. The wanting scares me. It’s like a weed that spreads slowly, just beneath your notice. Before you know it, it’s pitted your surfaces and darkened your windows.

One thing I’m certain of: Wanting just leads to more wanting. There’s no end to desire.

I’ve read many, many books involving heartache. Not one has ever described it as little. Soul-shattering and world-destroying, yes. Little, no.

Our bodies are having their own conversation separate and apart from us. Is this the difference between friendship and something else? This awareness that I have of him?

I am made. I am unmade.

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.

He tastes like salted caramel and sunshine. Or what I think salted caramel and sunshine taste like. He tastes like nothing I’ve ever experienced, like hope and possibility and the future.

as•ymp•tote (ˈasəm(p)ˌtōt) n. pl. -s. 1. A wish that continually approaches but never achieves fulfillment. [2015, Whittier]

I’ll never get to the end of all the ways I want to be with him.

Her handshake is too firm, as if she’s more used to crushing things than caring for them.

But I do know. I’ve always felt her heart reaching out to protect mine. I hear lullabies in her voice. I can still feel arms rocking me to sleep and her kisses on my cheeks in the morning. And I love her right back. I can’t imagine the world she’s given up for me.

Sometimes you do things for the right reasons and sometimes for the wrong ones and sometimes it’s impossible to tell the difference.

I was happy before I met him. But I’m alive now, and those are not the same thing.

“You’re not living if you’re not regretting.”

Into all lives a little turbulence must fall.

I wonder how his dad has managed to live in the world all his life without knowing what was precious in it.

MADELINE’S DICTIONARY prom•ise (ˈpräməs) n. pl. -es. 1. The lie you want to keep. [2015, Whittier]

MADELINE’S DICTIONARY o•cean (ˈōSHən) n. pl. -s. 1. The endless part of yourself you never knew but always suspected was there. [2015, Whittier]

He touches his forehead to mine when we’re finally close enough. His eyes are blue fire. He looks like a starving man, like he could devour me all at once.

I want to memorize the landscape of him with my hands.

A loco moco is a mountain of rice topped with a hamburger patty topped with gravy topped with two fried eggs.

“Maybe growing up means disappointing the people we love.”

don’t understand. Just because it’s the first time doesn’t make it less real, does it? Even the universe has a beginning.

like the first time and the last time and the only time all at once.”

MADELINE’S DICTIONARY in•fi•nite (ˈinfənit) adj. 1. The state of not knowing where one body ends and another begins: Our joy is infinite. [2015, Whittier]

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. Love is a terrible thing and its loss is even worse.

Nothing hurts except my heart, but I’m trying not to use it.

My brain is an unfamiliar room and trapdoors are everywhere.

From so high up 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.

LIFE IS SHORT™ SPOILER REVIEWS BY MADELINE THE LITTLE PRINCE BY ANTOINE DE SAINT-EXUPÉRY Spoiler alert: Love is worth everything. Everything.

A few days ago, when I was communing with the orrery, 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.