Carrie Ryan Quotes

I love you, Mary, he says, and that is when I let the tears come. The great heaving sobs of terror and pain that shake my body until I can do nothing but grab on to Travis to anchor me to this spot. He pulls me toward him and I curl around his body as I weep. I fall into darkness with his fingers trailing through my har, my cheeks still wet and my body heaving. ~ Carrie Ryan

Here, in the bustling stalls of the market, he's anonymous. And it's obvious how much he prefers it this way. ~ Carrie Ryan

I want to sleep, I want dreams to pull me from this world and make me forget. To stop the memories from swirling around me. To put an end to this ache that consumes me. ~ Carrie Ryan

I can't compare the lives I could have lived. One would have been comfort and security. But the other ... " She sighs. "It was the most love and the most pain and the most wonder I could have ever known. ~ Carrie Ryan

As I pass by him, I feel a crackle of tension between us. A slow heat begins its way into my cheeks, mirroring the flush in Grey's, and I realize that I hadn't been the only one acutely aware of his nakedness in the shower. ~ Carrie Ryan

Because if you're basically a moron at something, it's better to be a private moron than a public one. ~ Carrie Ryan

Survivors aren't always the strongest; sometimes they're the smartest, but more often simply the luckiest. ~ Carrie Ryan

All my life I have been trained by that siren. Before I could walk I knew the siren meant death. It meant somehow the fences had been breached and the Unconsecrated were shuffling among us. It meant grab weapons, move to the platforms and pull up the ladders - even if it necessitated leaving the living behind.
Growing up, my mother used to tell me about how in the beginning, when her own great-great-great-grandmother was a child, that siren would wail almost constantly as the village was bombarded with the Unconsecrated. But then the fences has been fortified, the Guardians had formed and time had passed with the Unconsecrated dwindling to the point that I couldn't remember a time in the past few years when that siren had wailed and it had not been a drill. I know that in my life there have been breaches but I also know that I am very good at blocking out the memories that serve me no purpose. I can fear the Unconsecrated well enough without them. ~ Carrie Ryan

It's funny, most people think that revenge is a passionate affair, driven by rage and pain. But it can't be. Feelings such as those make you weak. They overwrite thought and cause reckless impulses that lead to poor decisions. ~ Carrie Ryan

She feels like someone has planted a tree in her chest and then pressed fast foward on the world, branches growing and twisting and pushing her apart from the inside. ~ Carrie Ryan

How did she die?" Grey finally asks.
"Painfully." I hurl the word, dagger sharp, because I'm angry. And hurt ...
Grey's face crumbles. "Oh God." He presses a hand over his eyes as he doubles over, falling to his knees in the surf.
For a moment I stand over him, watching the way that he's broken. Knowing that I'm broken in the same way. My stomach roils at what I say next - at my capacity for cruelty. At my need to hurt him.
But it's the only way I know to save myself. Truth and revenge, my only lifelines. I let myself slip until I'm kneeling next to him. I place my arms around him. Comforting him.
"There's nothing you could have done." I say the words softly, knowing the aching brutality of them.
Because there was something he could have done to save her. He could have told the truth. ~ Carrie Ryan

In the moment between my mother's death and her Return, I stop believing in God. ~ Carrie Ryan

Habits die hard and absence doesn't stop my fingers from searching. ~ Carrie Ryan

Wait," Fin said, puzzling through the words. "That was a seed, not a secret."
"Of course it was." It sounded annoyed, at least for a tree. "Here, secrets turn to seed, good secrets take root, and the vines that grow bloom into rumors. They do that, you know," it said, as much to itself as to Fin. "Once planted, they grow. And start new rumors all their own. ~ Carrie Ryan

We are our own memory-keepers and we have failed ourselves. It is like that game we played in school as children. Sitting in a circle, one student whispers a phrase into another student's ear and the phrase is passed around until the last student in the circle repeats what she hears, only to find out it is nothing like what it is supposed to be.
This is our life now. ~ Carrie Ryan

But I don't know how to tell him all this. That I'm scared and I don't know how to be normal. I'm broken, just like him, and I'm not sure I can fix myself. ~ Carrie Ryan

You think you want love, Mary. You think it is this beautiful gift that does nothing but fill you and make you whole. But you are wrong. Love can be cruel and ugly. It can become dark and cause the deepest pain. ~ Carrie Ryan

Magic is just potential for creation. It follows no rules and breaks them all ~ Carrie Ryan

It's never been a perfect world. It's never going to be. It's going to be hard and scary, and if you're lucky, wonderful and awe-inspiring. But you have to push through the bad parts to get to the good. ~ Carrie Ryan

Sometimes it's those things you can't touch that you need to hold on to the most. ~ Carrie Ryan

Sometimes it's the mistakes that turn out to be the
best parts of life, ~ Carrie Ryan

Now that I've said this, I can't help but say more, can't help but speak the words that have been gathering in my head like dark clouds before the storm, building pressure and growing, and rolling over themselves in chaos. ~ Carrie Ryan

It's one thing to know a truth in your head but another to understand it in your heart. ~ Carrie Ryan

You kids take your time," the Naysayer called from above them. "Me an'the oncoming apocalypse will just hang out and get to know each other while we wait. ~ Carrie Ryan

It's as though my mother's life has been cut in two and we each only hold half of her memories. And I realize that even combined we would never know the whole. She's greater than the sum of what we remember of her. The woman Harry knows and the one I know are just edges of something larger.
I think about Elias and what he knows of my life in the Forest. And of Catcher and what he knows of my life in Vista. But does either of them know the whole of me? ~ Carrie Ryan

At best Grey and his father lied because they were scared. And at worst they lied because they were somehow involved. Either way they lied and I intend to find out why. You can hate me if you want. You can blame me for all of this, for keeping the truth from you. You can help me, or you can leave. But the one thing you can't do is stop me. ~ Carrie Ryan

How did he change? What was he like before?" ...
"He was happy before. ~ Carrie Ryan

You stay safe, You love. You survive. You laugh and cry and struggle and sometimes you fail and sometimes you succeed. You Push. ~ Carrie Ryan

Darkness grew where it would and took what it wanted. It staked its claim and never let go. And no one else could pry you free of it. ~ Carrie Ryan

It's as if there is infinity between our lips and we will never actually touch. Like math, where dividing by half can last for eternity. ~ Carrie Ryan

It's the most beautiful thing in the world." he says, "I just ... " He pauses and looks back into the fire. "I just kept walking. Wrapped in this white nothingness. ~ Carrie Ryan

His voice in my mind is soft, just out of reach like a spent echo. I wonder if these memories are worth holding on to. Are worth the burden. I wonder what purpose they serve. ~ Carrie Ryan

I stare at the way the tracks of her tears break across her jaw and along her neck, at how it looks like her face, once shattered, has been carefully put back together. And I wonder if that's what my scars really are: proof that I've put myself back together again. ~ Carrie Ryan

I catch my breath but he's not finished. I love you, Annah. And if you're willing to risk everything to be with me, then I'm willing to risk everything to be with you. I'm going to keep fighting for you, every day of my life. If you'll have me. ~ Carrie Ryan

But of course everything presses forward, even as we dig our feet against the reality of it all. ~ Carrie Ryan

Rollo the Walker. Who are you?"
"Dak," he answered. It seemed like Rollo expected more. "Uh, Dak the, er ... Cheese Eater? ~ Carrie Ryan

I realize that life is risks. It's acknowledging the past but looking forward. It's taking a chance that we will
make mistakes but believing that we all deserve to be forgiven. ~ Carrie Ryan

It's as if everything shifts around me, the pieces that didn't fit together finally twisting until they match. The terror that had been clouding and suffocating me begins to filter away, dissipating in the night. "I want something more too," I whisper. "I want more than looking back and wishing for what was or what could have been. Who I was or could have been. I want ... " I lick my lips, tasting him. "I want you. ~ Carrie Ryan

But that's what love is like when it's fresh and new. It's fire and thunder and heat. ~ Carrie Ryan

What use are experiences if we're not allowed to remember them? If we forget in order to avoid the pain of loss? What is the point of living if we have to always insulate ourselves? ~ Carrie Ryan

Who are we if not the stories we pass down? What happens when there's no one left to tell those stories? To hear them? Who will ever know that I existed? What if we are the only ones left
who will know our stories then? Who will remember those? ~ Carrie Ryan

I will always need you," I whisper. "All of this time I've waited for you. And you were never coming for me. Why did you let me wait for you? ~ Carrie Ryan

Maybe if she'd invited him into the forest all those years ago, things would have ended differently. But she doubted it. Darkness grew where it would and took what it wanted. It staked its claim and never let go.
And no one could pry you free of it. ~ Carrie Ryan

We will always survive. There is always hope. ~ Carrie Ryan

In the beginning, it said, we did not understand the extent of it. I ~ Carrie Ryan

I glance back at Shepherd. His eyes betray his mixture of revulsion and curiosity. It's obvious he knows he shouldn't want to hear this, that the horror is too great, yet he can't stop himself from listening. ~ Carrie Ryan

What matters is what we do with the life we have. ~ Carrie Ryan

I much prefer the colors dancing in my mind. ~ Carrie Ryan

Trauma always has a way of accelerating relationships, creating intimacy where none existed before. ~ Carrie Ryan

Always," I tell him. He catches his breath and I lean away until I can see his eyes. "I'm scared of losing my heart to you. But I think it's a risk I'm willing to take. ~ Carrie Ryan

I've let the day-to-day existence of life blind me to dreams. ~ Carrie Ryan

The more we lose, the more we become the survivors. ~ Carrie Ryan

Life is never that simple. And the fact that it's not that simple to you means only one thing: You're still alive. ~ Carrie Ryan

I feel as though I'm a storm inside and the waves of it can be seen in my eyes. ~ Carrie Ryan

I know that to you everything has changed for the worse over the last weeks. But for me ... " Elias pauses. rests his forehead into the curve of my neck. "Before you my life was nothing but wandering and solitude and death. Now with you there's possibility." He pulls back until we're looking into each other's eyes. "I'm falling inn love with you, Gabrielle. Not with the person you used to be, but you. ~ Carrie Ryan

The bodies. Oh God, the bodies. And the blood and the screams and the smell of it all, like overripe peaches stuffed with pennies. ~ Carrie Ryan

I realize that this is the way the world works. If I could stop the spin, stop the rotation, I would have done so long ago. I would have stopped it the first moment that Catcher's lips met mine under the moon in the amusement park. I would have held us in that eternity forever. But of course everything presses forward, even as we dig our feet against the reality of it all. One even tumbles from the next out of our control and we are dragged along, helpless. ~ Carrie Ryan

Do you ever think it's the dead that have the happy ending? Just they don't have to worry about surviving."
"But they're dead," he says
"Yeah. That means they don't have to remember anything."
Elias shakes his head. "That means they can't ever love."
I snort. "So they don't know loss. ~ Carrie Ryan

But then he whispers, "It will be okay, Mary." He pulls my head down to his chest and he wraps both his arms around me and all I can think is why can't life just stop here and now and leave us be in this moment. ~ Carrie Ryan

As if she is lost in that picture, lost in the blur of water and sky and I am the only thing holding her firm. ~ Carrie Ryan

Rage is a powerful emotion, strong enough not just to burn away pain but also to sear back the whispering tendrils of fear. ~ Carrie Ryan

I need him with an urgency that I cannot escape. ~ Carrie Ryan

She stood on the pile of rubble, her sword held high in such a way that it gleamed in the damp morning. She looked bold and fierce - unlike the science geek who'd been his best friend for years. ~ Carrie Ryan

Because I do not accept the hand of God; I do not believe in divine intervention or predestination. I cannot believe that our paths are pre-chosen and that our lives have no will. That there is no such thing as choice. ~ Carrie Ryan

It makes it seem as though there's no door between us at all. The sound of water gathering, cascading, trailing along the planes, ridges, and hollows of his naked body feels more intimate than if he were standing in front of me wearing nothing at all. ~ Carrie Ryan

She swears you can make it stop by forgiving and moving forward. I'm moving forward, but I'll never forgive. ~ Carrie Ryan

The living used to wonder what happened after death. She said that whole religions were born and evolved around this one simple uncertainty. ~ Carrie Ryan

Do you think the dead don't know what they've lost? Don't you ever wonder why they seek human flesh? That maybe it's their way of believing again? Of living again - if even for that one pure moment that blood pulses inside their mouths? ~ Carrie Ryan

It's not about surviving. It should be about love. When you know love ... that's what makes this life worth it. When you live with it everyday. Wake up with it, hold on to it during the thunder and after a nightmare. When love is your refuge from the death that surrounds us all and when it fills you so tight that you can't express it. ~ Carrie Ryan

It's not always about tomorrow and the day after that - what we achieve over the years and how we leave the world. Sometimes it's about today. ~ Carrie Ryan

The rule of thumb is that a body can only go three minutes without air, three days without water, and three weeks without food. Libby and I were adrift for seven days. ~ Carrie Ryan

There is a world out there, out beyond us. And now we are part of this world. It is terrifying and wonderful ~ Carrie Ryan

I don't understand how I can know so little about love and how it works. How I can be so bad at it when it's all I've ever wanted.
All I've ever known is about leaving or being left. ~ Carrie Ryan

how it can be that I have lost everything in my life but this journey. This hope that there is an end. ~ Carrie Ryan

I stomp through the water in a tight circle, kicking against the salt spray, wanting to pull the world apart piece by piece. ~ Carrie Ryan

You're stubborn- anyone ever tell you that before? ~ Carrie Ryan

Every night I drown and every morning I wake up struggling to breathe. ~ Carrie Ryan

He presses his lips to my jaw, to the corner of my mouth, to my ear. "I promise I'll find you again," he whispers. "I promise you I'll remember you. And I promise I'll love you. ~ Carrie Ryan

Eight Years Old, Eighteen Years Old
Cassidy was barely conscious when the March Hare, finally finished, gingerly lifted her onto her stump and gently slid a teacup onto her finger. She strained her senses and thought she heard a long sigh and the creak of old bones as he settled at the other end of the table. He stayed there with her through the night. Every time she struggled to open her eyes, she'd see him, the ghostly outline of white ears against the threatening shadows.
Perhaps he had killed her after all. Perhaps he hadn't. There was only one thing Cassidy Evans knew for sure: It had been a marvelous tea party. ~ Carrie Ryan

Ever since that first day on the beach, I haven't been able to stop thinking about you." A burst of warmth breaks free low in my abdomen. "And then later," he continues, "when you were in the pool, drifting just out of reach." His fingers dance along my hip toward my back, setting me on fire from the outside in.
I press my palms flat against the door behind me, needing to feel something but afraid to reach for him. His head drops lower and for a moment I think he's about to finally kiss me. But instead he shifts, bringing his lips slowly to my ear. "Do you know how many times I've imagined what would have happened if I'd just gone in after you? ~ Carrie Ryan

If you never try to see [someone] for who they are, then you don't love them enough. ~ Carrie Ryan

You could open the door, Frances whispers. Find your way through the steam, not even bothering to remove your clothes before stepping in with him.
His hands could slide along where your thin shirt molds against your hips. His fingers could find the hem, slowly gather it, inching higher. ~ Carrie Ryan

It wouldn't have mattered if they were scratches or not," he says, his voice like liquid. "I was bitten during the escape from the house." My limbs go weak, everything inside me folding in collapsing on itself.
"I was already dead," he says, opening his eyes. ~ Carrie Ryan

No one's made me feel this way in years." His whisper is rough, calloused. "I want you, Libby."
...
"Then have me," I whisper.
His lips land on mine, and it's like coming to the surface after drowning. All desperate need that eclipses everything else. He presses me against the door and we're a tangle of heart-hammering desire and panting need. ~ Carrie Ryan

I realize that sometimes death comes before you expect it. That while we are rarely prepared for our friends, family and loved ones to die, we are never prepared for our own deaths. Never prepared to reconcile our own regrets. ~ Carrie Ryan

It all seems so worthless. Such a waste of lives. We've spent hundreds of years since the Return buffering the Dark City and trying to maintain it - scraping out a life that will soon be wiped out.
And what of the rest of the world that's already fallen? Stars blinking away, their light slowly fading? Somewhere out there a star's just dying and we'll never know about it. Somewhere another's being born whose light we'll never see.
The Earth will spin, the stars will rearrange themselves around one another and the world will crawl with the dead who one day will drop into nothing ness: no humans left for them to scent, no flesh for them to crave. Everything-all of us-will simply cease to be. ~ Carrie Ryan

He stares at the two girls. Two broken bodies that moments before had been whole.
He did this. He helped to break the world. ~ Carrie Ryan

Afraid of the tangle of words twisting around my own tongue, I swallow and place my hand against the thick wood of the Barrier. ~ Carrie Ryan

[In my dream] they slide their lips over my skin, whispering whispering whispering. They tell me their names, they tell me their lives, they tell me their pain ... I can't struggle, I can't stop laughing, I can't resist these people who once were. ~ Carrie Ryan

So many memories roll through me and I realize that this is who we are: memories and shared experiences. This is what ties us all together. ~ Carrie Ryan

But she knows, now, there's no escape from the monsters. They'll always be there; you just choose to live with them or not. ~ Carrie Ryan

I just sat there, staring out towards the darkness of the ocean and the starlight flashing off the crests of the waves and knew that we were all part of this bigger whole. That somehow I mattered in the course of things and a part of me would always have left its mark on this world. ~ Carrie Ryan

Step outside what's comfortable and safe. ~ Carrie Ryan

Knowing that this is what it means to live. That this love, this need is what drives us to push and fight and build and grow. That as long as there's hope and love in this world, there will always be the living. ~ Carrie Ryan

I realized that life isn't something to be scared of. That you don't have to hold on so tightly that you can't breathe. ~ Carrie Ryan

She sat and put her head in her hands. "I'm going to kill him," she muttered, but her threat was halfhearted.
What would she do if she lost him for good? ~ Carrie Ryan

So, to very unsubtly change the subject, what kind of books do you like to read? And so help me if you say Greek mythology, I'll turn this car around myself.
It takes him a minute to get my joke, and then he starts laughing and I join in. And there's something about it all - the expanse of the summer sky arcing overhead and my hand still on Grey's warm thigh - that makes me wonder if I could just pause life here and wrap a bubble around this moment, if it would be enough to keep me happy. ~ Carrie Ryan

He is always there for her,always waiting. The most constant companion anyone could pray for. One of these days she will return to him. She will feel that desire again, that need beyond human comprehension, and they will be together forever. ~ Carrie Ryan

I let the sobs overtake me then. This was not the way I imagined my life. ~ Carrie Ryan

That's one of the benefits of being an orphan: instant sympathy. ~ Carrie Ryan