Top 180 Kennedy Ryan Quotes (2026 Update)
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51. “As much as she lights up a room, dancing, laughing from time to time, I’m beginning to see that just beneath the surface of Kai, there is as much shadow as there is shine.”

— Kennedy Ryan

52. “You have no idea what I’d do for you if you’d let me.” He runs his thumb over my bottom lip., his touch light, but enough to seize my breath. Enough to triple my heartbeat. “But one day you will.”

— Kennedy Ryan

53. “Iris is my constellation. She took the darkness as her cue to shine. It only made her brighter, stronger, and tonight, her hard-won glimmer lights up the sky.”

— Kennedy Ryan

54. “Art, specifically music, is a living thing,” he says. “It isn’t just absorbed by the people who hear it, but it absorbs them.”

— Kennedy Ryan

55. “Life is a constellation of decisions, connected by coincidences and deliberations, painting pictures in the heavens. During the day, when things are brightest, we don’t see the stars, but they are there. It’s only in the contrast of night, when things are darkest, that the stars shine.”

— Kennedy Ryan

56. “Yes.” MiMi’s affirmation infuses the air with power. “Strength. Dignity. Courage. All these things belong to you. Take them back. Your soul is yours. Your heart is yours. Your body is yours. Yours to keep and yours to share.” Yours to keep and yours to share.”

— Kennedy Ryan

57. “Age ain’t nothing but a number.” “Please let Aaliyah rest in peace.”

— Kennedy Ryan

58. “In the end, we are just animals. Primitives driven by urges we barely understand but, with the right person, find ourselves slave to.”

— Kennedy Ryan

59. “What’s true today won’t be in a hundred years. In ten years. It was held as fact that the Earth was flat until it was proven otherwise. It was true that women couldn’t vote a hundred years ago. But the Earth is round and now we vote. Now we speak and are heard. We re-made truth. We re-shaped fact.”

— Kennedy Ryan

60. “And if you’re lucky, you find people along the way who keep your feet on the ground – who remind you that real life matters, too.”

— Kennedy Ryan

61. “I will kiss him a million times in our life together and never tire of it. My lips will always cling, curious and searching. His touch is an endless thrill.”

— Kennedy Ryan

62. “I will worship you,” I remind her, taking her hand and tracing the letters tattooed beneath her wedding band, linking our fingers, showing her the ink beneath mine. “Still?” she asks with a watery smile. “Yeah.” Always. Evermore. Even after. “Still.”

— Kennedy Ryan

63. “My beloved is mine and I am his. – Song of Solomon 2:16.”

— Kennedy Ryan

64. “Then you have some tough decisions to make, and you should make them soon.” He bends to drop a soft kiss on my nose. “Because I won’t give up until you’re completely mine, Banner, and I won’t wait much longer.”

— Kennedy Ryan

65. “I howl like a wounded animal, but there’s no one to rescue me. I am the dumb lamb that wandered from the fold, and I’ve stumbled into the razor teeth of a hunter’s trap.”

— Kennedy Ryan

66. “I like the color of smart, the shade of funny, and sexy is my favorite hue.”

— Kennedy Ryan

67. “And every time I make you smile, I feel like I’ve conquered the world.”

— Kennedy Ryan

68. “Are you looking at my butt?” I ask, waffling between flattered and offended. “Of course,” Jared replies as if I’m crazy for asking. “I actually wish you’d stop talking because I was literally committing your ass in those pants to memory, and you’re breaking my concentration.”

— Kennedy Ryan

69. “You signed up for me... And I signed up for you, whatever that means, wherever that takes us.”

— Kennedy Ryan

70. “No one has to tell a queen to wear her crown.”

— Kennedy Ryan

71. “But you have one more time to put your finger in my face and step to me.”

— Kennedy Ryan

72. “There is no before. There is no after. Now gives birth to forever. This moment may die, but this love never will. Time is not a line. It’s a circle, and we, August and Iris, we stand at the center.”

— Kennedy Ryan

73. “Life is indiscriminately seasoned, usually not sweet without some bitter. Usually not sun without some rain.”

— Kennedy Ryan

74. “There is no one else but you, my friend, my equal.” – Song of Solomon 5:2.”

— Kennedy Ryan

75. “There’s something helpless about truly being in love, the kind of love they write songs about, that inspires poetry and launches ships and wreaks havoc. It leaves you slightly off balance, controlling when you mean to cherish, smothering when you mean to hold close.”

— Kennedy Ryan

76. “What I’m saying is be unafraid to want it all and be disciplined enough to work hard to get it.”

— Kennedy Ryan

77. “He studies me a moment longer, and the intimacy and openness are almost too much, but I force myself not to look away. I’ve never been more vulnerable to anyone, and I’ve never trusted anyone else the way I trust Grip – with my life, with my heart.”

— Kennedy Ryan

78. “We feel the things we need to know instead of say them. With my chest pressed to his back, forgiveness, love, understanding, and tenderness transfer noiselessly between the layers of our clothes, an emotional osmosis through blood and bone, through hurt and fear.”

— Kennedy Ryan

79. “Give yourself permission to let it hurt, but allow yourself permission to let it heal.” Nikki Rowe, Once a Girl, Now a Woman.”

— Kennedy Ryan

80. “Don’t just act out of what you think is best for her. You’re not her parent. You’re not her father. Think about what will show her that you love her and understand her.”

— Kennedy Ryan

81. “I’ve never felt like this about anyone else, and I’m not giving you up once I have you. You better get used to that.”

— Kennedy Ryan

82. “If you were mine, Iris there would be no doubt what position you’d hold in my life. You’d be center. I’d play you at the five.”

— Kennedy Ryan

83. “Your dreams and ambitions got swallowed up when you had to follow Caleb,” I say, holding her eyes with mine. “I want you to know there’s someone who will follow you.”

— Kennedy Ryan

84. “If you’ve heard shots as many times as we have, if you live with it, you know the sound a gun makes when it’s fired is a moan. The moan of a mother, a father, a daughter, or son losing someone they love.”

— Kennedy Ryan

85. “You heard me. I don’t have a girlfriend anymore. Cindy and I broke up.” “But I’m not your type,” I blurt. “And yet I broke up with her so you,” he says, laying the tip of one long finger on my breastbone, “would kiss me.”

— Kennedy Ryan

86. “Something can feel good, but not feel right.”

— Kennedy Ryan

87. “We both gave each other space to be misunderstood, because we really wanted to understand.”

— Kennedy Ryan

88. “There’s a zone a shooter enters where the hoop feels closer and wider, like a woman spreading herself open and making it easy for you to slip in. You hear swoosh before the ball leaves your hands. It feels like you could close your eyes and make every shot – you’re that in tune with the net.”

— Kennedy Ryan

89. “It’s not an existential question of immortality, of living forever, but a challenge of numbered days and what we do with what we have. It’s not a string of todays that become yesterdays and aspire to tomorrow, but living like there is no guarantee. Living with an urgency to say what needs to be said, do what needs to be done. To no matter what, live with what you’ll leave behind in mind.”

— Kennedy Ryan

90. “Seeing you wear my number is like a wet dream wrapped in a hand job.”

— Kennedy Ryan

91. “Can you miss someone you’ve never had? Because I miss Iris. I can’t even share that with anyone because they’d think I was a lunatic. Obsessed. Fixated. I like to think of it as certain. Like when I’m in the zone, the game comes to me easily and I’m certain I’ll make every shot before the ball even leaves my hands – that’s how I feel about Iris. She’s a shot that hasn’t even left my hands, but I know will be nothing but net. I’m certain that if ever given the chance, it would be that way for us.”

— Kennedy Ryan

92. “She’s right. I’m dirty. How could I not be after that animal was inside me? After he subdued me like a rabbit he only left alive for sport?”

— Kennedy Ryan

93. “You can’t change what has already happened. What you did or decided. So you have two choices. Wallow in it, stay in the chokehold of guilt and shame that holds you back from the next phase of your life” – she taps the pad with the pen – “or decide you’ve punished yourself long enough for things you can never change and set a date when you’ll forgive yourself and move forward.”

— Kennedy Ryan

94. “And I think I’m most grateful for time, which doesn’t always heal all wounds, but teaches us how to be happy again even with our scars.”

— Kennedy Ryan

95. “Every day that ends with me still breathing has ended well.”

— Kennedy Ryan

96. “This is a problem since the only girl I want to sleep with won’t return my calls. Won’t leave her damn boyfriend. Won’t yield. And I’ve determined that sleeping with Banner isn’t enough. Leaving Zo isn’t enough. I want her to yield. I want her as preoccupied with me as I am with her. As fixated on me as I am on her. Anything less than her feeling as obsessed as I do just doesn’t seem fair.”

— Kennedy Ryan

97. “Mama always reminded me that love keeps no record of wrongs. I didn’t know until now that true love, pure love, the right love, doesn’t keep that record because it can’t. I can’t. I have to forgive Rhyson because I have to be with him. I just want it to be right. I want us to be right. To.”

— Kennedy Ryan

98. “We are artists,” she quotes softly, her eyes set on mine. “When there is no joy to be found, we have the power in our hands, the will of our souls, to make it.”

— Kennedy Ryan

99. “You want me to relieve you of the responsibility? ‘Cause I’ll do it. I don’t mind being the villain, but between you and me, we’ll know that you want it as badly as I do. I’m just the one with the balls to make it happen.”

— Kennedy Ryan

100. “We just tiptoe around things, afraid we’ll offend or look ignorant, be misunderstood. Honesty is a risk few are willing to take.”

— Kennedy Ryan