Carrie Ryan

“Sometimes you have to do things you don't like in order to make a change in the world.”

“Every night I drown and every morning I wake up struggling to breathe.”

“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.”

“I let the sobs overtake me then. This was not the way I imagined my life.”

“I wonder what right we have to believe our childhood dreams will come true.”

“—Aquí abajo pueden ser días u horas, pero todo lo que he sabido, todo lo existe para mí, eres tú.”

“Sometiems it's those things you can't touch that you need to hold onto most.”

“Would you leave your world for me?" he asks. "I might." she tells him. She wonders how the world ever fell apart with this much love in it.”

“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.”

“...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.”

“If your friend really cared about you he wouldn't let you take such risks.”

“Every day, the pain of that moment has scored through me. The humiliation and anger and misery and rejection. So many emotions that churn over me, always forcing me to feel it all fresh again and again - never in my life had I felt so ugly and unwanted.”

“My mother use to tell me about the ocean.”

“—En ese momento noté que había cometido el error más grande en mi vida. Noté que no soy nada sin ti. No tiene sentido estar vivo si no puedo amarte.”

“I sit with my knees pulled in tight and my arms wrapped around my shins. I can no longer feel my feet, as if blood refuses to spread so far from my heart.”

“We’re set in motion and then we spend our lives maintaining that motion, but to what end? For what purpose?”

“I remember my mother telling me earlier that we are nothing more than our stories. I look at the masses of dead flesh, at all the stories that are now forever silenced.”

“[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.”

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

“Él pone sus manos encima de las mías, el sentimiento tan cálido y familiar. —Esos días atrás, allí en la casa. Ese era mi mundo. Ésa es mi verdad —dice—Ese es mi océano.”

“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.”

“What matters is what we do with the life we have."-The Dark and Hollow Places”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“Keď spoznáš lásku ... láska je to, vďaka čomu hodno žiť. Keď s ňou každý deň žiješ. Zobúdzaš sa s ňou, držíš sa jej v nepohode a po prežitej nočnej more. Keď je láska tvoje útočisko pred smrťou, čo nás obklopuje a napĺňa ťa až po okraj, že to ani nedokážeš vyjadriť.”

“When you know love . . . that's what makes life worth it.”

“That's what I've started to learn about this world. It might give, but it always takes away.”

“Those days back there, in the house. That is my world. That is my truth," he says. "That is my ocean.”

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

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

“There is a child - a baby - who long since kicked off her blankets. Her skin is ashen and her mouth open in a perpetual yet silent scream. She isn't old enough to roll over, to sit up, to climb. So she lies there kicking her fat legs against the footboard of the crib, eternally calling for her mother. For food. For flesh.”

“You're stubborn- anyone ever tell you that before?”

“Sometimes life isn't about the end. 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...Any of us could die tomorrow regardless of the horde. We could get sick or be injured or anything else. That's the risk we take waking up each morning and stepping outside.”

“Sometimes it's those things you can't touch that you need to hold on to the most.”

“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.”

“We are our own memory-keepers, and we have failed ourselves.”

“Sometimes it’s the mistakes that turn out to be thebest parts of life,”

“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.”

“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?”

“I need him with an urgency that I cannot escape.”

“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.”

“Gravity pulls harder on troubles than on anything else.”

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

“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.”

“...[F]inding the end of the path [is] not quite as important as the journey to getting there.”

“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.”

“We will always survive. There is always hope.”

“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.”