Top 70 Carrie Ryan Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “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

2. “Survivors aren’t always the strongest; sometimes they’re the smartest, but more often simply the luckiest.”

— Carrie Ryan

3. “There’s one detail I’ve always remembered: He told me how long it takes the light from the stars to reach through space to us. How most of the points of light we see actually no longer exist. We’re just seeing the remnants of what was – ghosts of what use to be.”

— Carrie Ryan

4. “The broken ones need someone to fight for them even harder.”

— Carrie Ryan

5. “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

6. “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

7. “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?”

— Carrie Ryan

8. “But that’s what love is like when it’s fresh and new. It’s fire and thunder and heat.”

— Carrie Ryan

9. “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

10. “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

11. “They’re endless, stretching beyond the horizon and spreading around me like forever. They heave and moan, frothing over each other, cresting and falling. The pure depth and vastness of it all beyond comprehension, my eyes unable to focus on any individual. Instead I’m drowned in their need. They ripple and swell, the bodies of the Mudo, like the ocean. Like the dead-tossed waves.”

— Carrie Ryan

12. “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

13. “She prays to God, but He’s silent. She searches for guidance, but the forest only moans.”

— Carrie Ryan

14. “We’re both just human. Nothing more. But also nothing less.”

— Carrie Ryan

15. “Magic is just potential for creation. It follows no rules and breaks them all.”

— Carrie Ryan

16. “Ironically, by struggling so hard to circumvent the prophecy of his death at the hand of his son, Laius became instrumental in its coming to pass.”

— Carrie Ryan

17. “That’s one of the benefits of being an orphan: instant sympathy.”

— Carrie Ryan

18. “We forget that the rest of live can be just as dangerous. I think about how fragile we are here – like fish in a glass bowl with the darkness pressing in on every side.”

— Carrie Ryan

19. “If anything, revenge is the absence of emotion. It’s pure, calculated thought stripped bare of entangling emotions. It’s cold, deliberate action.”

— Carrie Ryan

20. “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

21. “Life is life. You choose to live it or you do not.”

— Carrie Ryan

22. “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

23. “I am nothing except this: a girl reborn of the deep ocean silence, meant for nothing but vengeance.”

— Carrie Ryan

24. “She must face the forest of her mother’s past in order to save herself and the one she loves.”

— Carrie Ryan

25. “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

26. “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

27. “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

28. “Do you still believe that if you truly want something enough it can happen?” I ask. I think of all the times I wanted to stop the world from spinning, all the times I wanted to go back and start over again. All the things I’ve wanted to undo or take back. Did I not want them enough?”

— Carrie Ryan

29. “With our seat belts still fastened, there’s no way for us to move closer, at least not without clearly stating our intentions to do so. And this is all too young and new for that.”

— Carrie Ryan

30. “I realize that that’s been my problem all along. Not only wanting comfort and security and safety, but looking to others to find it when I need to find it inside myself.”

— Carrie Ryan

31. “I know,′ Jed says. I’m thrown over his shoulder and I can feel how his body shakes and I know that he is crying. For me, for Beth. And I wonder if there was ever a crueler world than this one that forces us to kill the people we love most.”

— Carrie Ryan

32. “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

33. “Not all monsters are filled with darkness.”

— Carrie Ryan

34. “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

35. “Trauma always has a way of accelerating relationships, creating intimacy where none existed before.”

— Carrie Ryan

36. “I think about how fragile we are here – like fish in a glass bowl with darkness pressing in on every side.”

— Carrie Ryan

37. “But of course everything presses forward, even as we dig our feet against the reality of it all.”

— Carrie Ryan

38. “That’s the thing about silences and futures; someone always comes along to fill them in. If you let them.”

— Carrie Ryan

39. “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

40. “Here, in the bustling stalls of the market, he’s anonymous. And it’s obvious how much he prefers it this way.”

— Carrie Ryan

41. “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

42. “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

43. “He places his hands over mine, the feeling so warm and familiar. ‘Those days back there, in the house. That is my world. That is my truth,’ he says. ‘That is my ocean.”

— Carrie Ryan

44. “What if I don’t know what I want?” I ask her, voicing the fear that rages through me. “What if I never know? What if I’m wrong?”

— Carrie Ryan

45. “What use are experiences if we’re not allowed to remember them? If we forget in order to avoid the pain and loss? What is the point of living if we have to always insulate ourselves?”

— Carrie Ryan

46. “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

47. “She swears you can make it stop by forgiving and moving forward. I’m moving forward, but I’ll never forgive.”

— Carrie Ryan

48. “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

49. “And I wonder if that’s what my scars really are: proof that I’ve put myself back together again.”

— Carrie Ryan

50. “There is a world out there, out beyond us. And now we are part of this world. It is terrifying and wonderful.”

— Carrie Ryan