Y/N Quotes

“Despite everything I've been through, I still think that my loneliness is part of some character-building prologue to the joy of togetherness that inevitably awaits me,' she said. 'Isn't that funny?”
― Esther Yi, Y/N

“I wasn’t sure how to navigate a space filled with strangers who knew I loved what they loved. It was like going to the sauna, except our naked bodies were identical, which made the embarrassment recursive and pointless.”
― Esther Yi, Y/N

“I wish I were made of glass,” I said. “Then you could see right into me. I wouldn’t have to say a word to make you understand what I’m feeling.”

“It’s more likely that I would see right through you,” O said. “Which means I wouldn’t see you at all. I’d forget you’re there and crash into you like a glass wall. Flesh constitutes a tradeoff: it lets you know that a person is standing before you, but you have no idea what this person means.”
― Esther Yi, Y/N

“I love the world I hate simply because you live in it.”
― Esther Yi, Y/N

“As a human being who cannot live without love, I know full well that I have exhausted my options on this disappointing planet. The question is no longer 'Who are the people who will accept my unusual love?' but rather 'How do I make my love more unusual and more unacceptable”
― Esther Yi, Y/N

“If most people looked for someone to love, she, like a tax collector, looked for those who failed to love her and made them pay up.”
― Esther Yi, Y/N

“He is pure future. It's not him that I love. I love the story of him.”
― Esther Yi, Y/N

“Every human body is capable of producing a spirit that lingers apart from it. But whether that spirit is truer or falser than the body━she has no answer.”
― Esther Yi, Y/N

“They confused their navigation through the stunning variety of meaningless choices as an expression of their individuality.”
― Esther Yi, Y/N

“I would love for you to know what this feels like,” she said. “I would love for you to feel as badly as I do. But you’re headed for a place without answers. So turn back around and dig your heels into a world that’s been waiting here for you all along.”
― Esther Yi, Y/N

“Indeed, O's painting made me wish I could return to a time before my birth, back when I was still steeling myself for the limitations of the body to come. Then I could plan in advance all the ways in which I would dare to be. This was, of course, a pointless fantasy. I was already here, in the thick of this life, a parade of missed opportunities, a second-to-second condemnation of my mediocrity.”
― Esther Yi, Y/N

“Inside your mother, you were perfectly round, complete unto yourself. You wanted for nothing. But you were born, and the nightmare began. Your body was pulled in all directions. Your arms, legs, neck, even your hair—they shouldn’t look this way. They’ve been elongated by their constant attempts to reach out and anchor to anything at all on the vast plaza that is the world.”
― Esther Yi, Y/N

“Driving a moped is the easiest thing in the world,” O shouted. “Keep your eyes fixed on a single point in the horizon. Don’t look anywhere else. If a truck is about to crash into you, ignore it. If a plane is falling out of the sky, ignore it. Look straight ahead and squeeze the power. Do not change course. The world will change for you. You are at the center of the universe. You can’t make a single wrong move.”
― Esther Yi, Y/N

“He doesn't need to know who you are to wait for you. You must find him. When you confront him with the full force of who you are, only then will he realize he's been waiting for you. You have to show up and confront him with his destiny in the form of you.”
― Esther Yi, Y/N

“I'm tired of experiencing reality as that which happens strictly to me. My small life can't possibly encompass all of human experience.”
― Esther Yi, Y/N

“As a human being who cannot live without love, I know full well that I have exhausted my options on this disappointing planet. The question is no longer ‘Who are the people who will accept my unusual love?’ but rather ‘How do I make my love more unusual and more unacceptable?”
― Esther Yi, Y/N

“You are not your dryness," the Boys said in small copy on the box, "You are not your sebum." They wanted to make the world a better place, and that began with my enlarged pores.”
― Esther Yi, Y/N

“I still think that my loneliness is part of some character-building prologue to the joy of togetherness that inevitably awaits me,”
― Esther Yi, Y/N

“I was not enough for myself, my body was not enough, yet I needed it, I couldn’t think or feel anything limitless without it.”
― Esther Yi, Y/N

“That woman thinks you've been waiting your whole life to believe in something, and she's ready to tell you what it should be.”
― Esther Yi, Y/N

“Nothing true is ever fair.”
― Esther Yi, Y/N

“You know best how to flagellate yourself.”
― Esther Yi , Y/N

“You must have heard the saying that the pen is mightier than the sword. Well, its usage has vanished from popular literature in recent years. What has taken its place is the comparison of the pen to a gun. This reflects, I hypothesize, the growing awareness that the act of writing kills quickly and from a great distance. Literature murders—not the reader, as one might expect, but the characters, who are no different from real people. Behind every character is a person out in the world whose sanctity is violated in the process of literary transfiguration. Every black letter on a white page is a bullet.”
― Esther Yi, Y/N

“My First Time, experienced at the age of twenty-nine, made me wonder about all the other first times out there to be had.”
― Esther Yi, Y/N

“I just like the feeling of us moving through time together. I need him there. I need to know that at this very moment he’s looking down at his hands somewhere in the world.”
― Esther Yi, Y/N

“I knew how all of this felt, better than if I had felt it myself. The boy was my ambassador, sent to a foreign land with which my own land was in delicate relations. I'd never visited this country myself, maimed king that I was.”
― Esther Yi, Y/N

“She liked to compare Polygon Plaza to a monastery: a place where the dissolution of the self produced moments of astonishing self-expression.”
― Esther Yi, Y/N

“He's as good as dead. Take that mindset, and you'll recover faster.

I can't recover on the basis of an illusion.

Don't you understand that your entire situation is an illusion?”
― Esther Yi, Y/N

“You've settled for a comfortable distance from him so that you can yearn without suffering. Sorry, but you're not in love.”
― Esther Yi, Y/N

“Everything about Masterson was long, even his thoughts. I was covertly watching him through an oblong mirror on the wall to my left. I hoped everyone would leave soon. What I liked doing most was to lie naked and absolutely still underneath him in bed and to stare into his eyes with no expression on my face. I was happy in those moments because I became nothing, just a scale for his weight.”
― Esther Yi, Y/N