Kennedy Ryan > Quotes

“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, Long Shot

“Take them back. Your soul is yours. Your heart is yours. Your body is yours. Yours to keep and yours to share.”
― Kennedy Ryan, Long Shot

“Sometimes the heart speaks in whispers, and by the time we hear, by the time we listen, it’s too late…”
― Kennedy Ryan, Long Shot

“And when the years have passed,
and we have watched a thousand sunsets,
and we are bent,
our bodies crooked with age
ask me again.
In the twilight,
in the shadow of the life we have shared,
ask me if I love you,
and my heart will answer before my lips can part.
My love, my life,
my heart never left your hands.
Always, evermore, even after.
Still.”
― Kennedy Ryan, Still

“Hope is the gap between what if and what is, but you have to fill that gap with a lot of hard work. And that’s what we’re going to talk about this week. Hope. Dreams. Work.”
― Kennedy Ryan, Long Shot

“Even when you think you’re defeated, dig deeper. Go harder. Press, because there is something worth it on the other side.”
― Kennedy Ryan, Long Shot

“Depression,” she goes on, “is a liar. If it will tell you no one loves you, that you’re not good enough, that you’re a burden or, in the most extreme cases, better off dead, then it can certainly convince you that you’re better off without the man you love, and that, ultimately, he’s better off without you.”
― Kennedy Ryan, Before I Let Go

“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, Before I Let Go

“Ours is a love that reimagines—that peels back the sky at high noon searching for the stars, collecting them like shells in a bucket. We bathe in stardust, drink from the Milky Way, and dance on the moon. We pierce the firmament, peer into infinity, and tread on time and space. 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, Long Shot

“You’re right.” I loosen my fingers from hers so I can hold her face between both hands. “Going to Houston is my best shot at winning a ring.” “Then why would you—” “But staying here,” I cut in, caressing the fullness of her bottom lip with my thumb. “Staying is my best shot at winning you.”
― Kennedy Ryan, Long Shot

“There aren’t enough sonnets for friendship. Not enough songs for the kind of love not born of blood or body but of time and care. They are the ones we choose to laugh and cry and live with. When lovers come and go, friends are the ones who remain. We are each other’s constants.”
― Kennedy Ryan, This Could Be Us

“Struggle does not make you weak,” she whispers back. “Struggling against those who hold us is what makes us, over time, stronger than they are. Strong enough to fight back. Strong enough to win.”
― Kennedy Ryan, Long Shot

“Grief is a grind. It is the work of breathing and waking and rising and moving through a world that feels emptier. A gaping hole has been torn into your existence, and everyone around you just walks right past it like it’s not even there. But all you can do is stand and stare.”
― Kennedy Ryan, Before I Let Go

“finding someone you can laugh with when everything hurts—was the stuff happily ever afters were made of.”
― Kennedy Ryan, Before I Let Go

“Ask me when your belly is full like the moon,
and our love has stretched your body with my child,
leaving your skin, once flawless,
now silvered, traced, scarred,
I will worship you.
My eyes will never stray.
My heart will never wander,
gladly leashed to you all my days.
I am fixed on you.”
― Kennedy Ryan, Still

“I heard someone say once that when you try to fix people’s hurt, you’re controlling it instead of sitting with them and connecting.”
― Kennedy Ryan, Before I Let Go

“i cannot love you gently, it’s not in me to love in part, so I will love You completely, and a little madly . . . – Matt Spencer, Poet”
― Kennedy Ryan, Block Shot

“When you hurt the way we women sometimes have to, when you lose so much, when the world ends over and over and over again, we are no longer butterflies. Those wings are much too fragile to carry us on and through. I’m a hornet. I can love. And I can sting.”
― Kennedy Ryan, This Could Be Us

“She remembered who she was and the game changed.”
― Kennedy Ryan, Long Shot

“Still?” she asks with a watery smile.
“Yeah.” Always. Evermore. Even after. “Still.”
― Kennedy Ryan, Still

“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, Long Shot

“I’ve fallen in love with the warrior woman who walked through fire, the one who came through stronger, reshaped by sorrow, reformed by grief, reborn in joy.”
― Kennedy Ryan, Before I Let Go

“a woman who wants more and realizes she deserves it is a dangerous thing.”
― Kennedy Ryan, This Could Be Us

“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, Long Shot

“I like the color of smart, the shade of funny, and sexy is my favorite hue.”
― Kennedy Ryan, Flow

“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, Before I Let Go

“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, Long Shot

“When are we ever done working on ourselves? I believe wholeness is not a destination, but a lifetime process. Something that instead of waiting for, you could be living for.”
― Kennedy Ryan, This Could Be Us

“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, Before I Let Go

“You’re a great player, August.” She tips up on her toes until her lips are at my ear. “But I think you’ll be an even greater man.”
― Kennedy Ryan, Long Shot