Top 180 Kennedy Ryan Quotes (2026 Update)
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151. “He’s also sharp. I’d know immediately if someone wanted my girl, and I could be wrong, but I think Zo is sharp enough to at least suspect I want his. Only I don’t think of Banner as his. Banner was taken from me.”

— Kennedy Ryan

152. “That,” she says, “is an irreversible outcome. Divorce may or may not be. Broken relationships may or may not be. You may never repair those completely, but you’re still here to try. Do you recognize what an amazing gift that is? To still be here to try?”

— Kennedy Ryan

153. “When other people are as outraged and as curious about those problems as black people are,” he says. “Then maybe we can solve them together.”

— Kennedy Ryan

154. “I got serious the last few years about my outside reflecting the confident, powerful woman I was on the inside.”

— Kennedy Ryan

155. “I know exactly what I want.” He bends and leaves featherlight kisses on my lips. “I want another chance with you, Banner. The chance that was taken from us. I want to make love to you with the lights on.”

— Kennedy Ryan

156. “Breathe out the lies. That it was your fault. That you failed. That you are what they said you were. Breathe in truth. You are pure. You are enough. You are strong.”

— Kennedy Ryan

157. “He’s dictating my heartbeat, governing my pulse, holding my next breath cupped in his hands.”

— Kennedy Ryan

158. “I know I said my compass spins.” Emotion makes it hard to get the words out. “But not with you.”

— Kennedy Ryan

159. “I want you to find someone you love more than your art.”

— Kennedy Ryan

160. “Don’t you feel how connected we are?” I ask. “If I break your heart, I break mine.” A sweet smile spreads over her lips and she nods.”

— Kennedy Ryan

161. “Every time I’m near her I want to pour accelerant all over my anger so it burns us both to ash.”

— Kennedy Ryan

162. “No.” I want to take her with him just yards away.”

— Kennedy Ryan

163. “I know it’s unreasonable because I met her no more than an hour ago. We’ve had one conversation. Some people leave an impression. Lennix Moon Hunter has left more than an impression. She’s left her mark on me. And it’s shaped like a star.”

— Kennedy Ryan

164. “What if he decides someday the one thing he really wants, really needs is the one thing I can never be?”

— Kennedy Ryan

165. “Extraordinary wants no parts of normal.”

— Kennedy Ryan

166. “I don’t give a damn about odds,” she says. “Odds don’t tell me what I can’t do. Odds just tell me how hard I’ll have to work to get what I want. Don’t allow anyone to make you feel less.”

— Kennedy Ryan

167. “Thank you, MiMi.” I blink at my tears with my head tucked into her long, silver braid. “I feel so weak sometimes, and you make me feel strong.”

— Kennedy Ryan

168. “Damn, my head hurts. That’s what happens when Jolly the Big Ass Giant elbows you in the head.”

— Kennedy Ryan

169. “Tomorrow,” she says from the screen, from a wheelchair precipitously close to the edge of a pier, “is the most presumptuous word in the world, because who knows if you even get that.”

— Kennedy Ryan

170. “You’re not asking the wrong question. Is it the most important question, though?”

— Kennedy Ryan

171. “She’s not someone you banished with therapy and meds. She is you. You cannot dissociate from her. Until you reconcile that, you won’t find true peace. Until you have compassion for her instead of judgment, you cannot fully heal.”

— Kennedy Ryan

172. “What should be foreign feels familiar.”

— Kennedy Ryan

173. “But we are sometimes in the most danger when we let our guards down, when we let peace deceive us and trick us into forgetting.”

— Kennedy Ryan

174. “As the stars dim and the darkness encroaches, I understand I’m like those who stayed too long, blindly assuming their survival.”

— Kennedy Ryan

175. “Breathe in truth.” Her hands are busy in the air over me, slicing through lies. “You are pure. You are enough. You are strong.” She leans closer, her whisper as sharp and fierce as the knife in her drawer. “He can’t hurt you.”

— Kennedy Ryan

176. “He’s looking at me like I’m the sunrise and he’s grateful for a brand new day.”

— Kennedy Ryan

177. “Your zip code shouldn’t determine the quality of your education.”

— Kennedy Ryan

178. “But I want to hear the same dismay and curiosity,” he continues, his smile leveling out. “About the issues that are actually eroding our communities. Let’s ask why black men are six percent of the general population and nearly forty percent of the prison population.”

— Kennedy Ryan

179. “How do people do this? When the rug is pulled out from under the life the thought they would have forever, how do they pretend it’s not seismic? That the roof hasn’t fallen in and they’re trapped under a concrete beam?”

— Kennedy Ryan

180. “What color are you?” he repeats, his eyes never leaving my face. “You, Bristol, are a freaking prism.”

— Kennedy Ryan

181. “I guide her back down to the couch, and with a hand at her shoulder, urge her to stretch out. I’d shave points off my GPA for a glimpse of her, but she doesn’t want that. I get it, so I settle for a taste.”

— Kennedy Ryan

182. “So what color am I then?” I ask before thinking better of it. He’ll probably just say I’m white, obviously. “What color are you?” he repeats, his eyes never leaving my face. “You, Bristol, are a freaking prism.”

— Kennedy Ryan

183. “She looks like me,” he says. “I told you we’re twins. Lemme check the Cloud for a picture.” Did.”

— Kennedy Ryan

184. “She is bright and good. And I can be dark, bad when I have to be. Sometimes when I don’t have to be, but just want to be. She is day and I am night. When day and night are absolutely equal, it’s equinox. Banner is my equinox. My equal. The revelation rattles around inside me, but my face, my surface remains smooth.”

— Kennedy Ryan

185. “Electric current spears me down the middle, landing in my core. He sucks all the oxygen from the room, and my lungs desperately push breath from my chest. He studies me under hooded lids, knowing exactly what he’s doing to me.”

— Kennedy Ryan

186. “Dwell in possibility.”

— Kennedy Ryan

187. “Your views on the two-party system are well-documented and duly noted.” “I don’t understand a nation that grew so powerful using capitalism, which is essentially about choice and options and hard work, being so lazy as to give us only two options, usually bad ones, in something as crucial as leading the free world.”

— Kennedy Ryan

188. “The heart speaks in whispers. I heard too late.”

— Kennedy Ryan

189. “I don’t know if it’s mine or if it’s hers, but this moment, this perfect glass-blown moment where our bodies unite and our souls intersect, this moment belongs to us.”

— Kennedy Ryan

190. “However imperfect she appears to some, she is ours, and we already love her deeply and will treasure any time we have with her.”

— Kennedy Ryan

191. “What if she gave me to you?” I bend to whisper over her lips. “What if I’m your gris gris now?”

— Kennedy Ryan

192. “We all know you’re a gifted athlete, August. Don’t just show off. Show us you can lead.”

— Kennedy Ryan

193. “Nothing against fake lashes. I just don’t like it when the woman blinking them is fake, too.”

— Kennedy Ryan

194. “There is no place, no spot on the continuum of time that could have hidden this man from me.”

— Kennedy Ryan

195. “Everyone falls for Banner. Whether they feel like she’s the daughter they never had, like Karen does, or like she’s the best thing that ever happened to their business, like that blowhard Cal Bagley. Or that she’s the only girl for them, like Zo does. Too bad about Zo because she’s actually the only girl for me. He’ll find someone else. I have faith in him.”

— Kennedy Ryan

196. “Funny how the words he doesn’t say can sting more than the ones he does.”

— Kennedy Ryan

197. “What?” I ask, smiling back involuntarily. “Your laugh,” he says. “I want to make you laugh like that every day.”

— Kennedy Ryan

198. “I look at her, cataloging her features one by one and realizing the most fascinating thing about this girl isn’t visible to the naked eye.”

— Kennedy Ryan

199. “Say it again.” He advances deeper into the room until he stands right in front of me. “I need to hear it again.” “I love you,” I say, my voice sober and honest. “I think I have for a long time.” He cups my cheek and kisses my hair. “Me, too,” he says, the look in his eyes belying the casual tone of his voice. “Since senior year, to be exact.”

— Kennedy Ryan