Carrie Ryan

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

“I realize that life is risks. It’s acknowledging the past but looking forward. It’s taking a chance that we willmake mistakes but believing that we all deserve to be forgiven.”

“Darkness grew where it would and took what it wanted. It staked its claim and never let go. And no one else could pry you free of it.”

“It wouldn't have mattered if they were scratches or not," he says, his voice like liquid. "I was bitten during the escape from the house." My limbs go weak, everything inside me folding in collapsing on itself."I was already dead," he says, opening his eyes.”

“You stay safe, You love. You survive. You laugh and cry and struggle and sometimes you fail and sometimes you succeed. You Push.”

“I know in my life there have been breaches, but I also know that I am very good at blocking out the memories that serve me no purpose.”

“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.”

“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.”

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

“Not all monsters are filled with darkness.”

“Broken things can be made whole again. Perhaps not as they were before, but maybe stronger this time.”

“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.”

“I imagine that's what it must have been like to ride the roller coaster back in the before time. One moment teetering at the top, the world laid out before you and the rush of life filling your lungs. . . and then the plummet. The lack of control. That's what I've started to learn about this world. It might give, but it always takes away.”

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

“Maybe if she'd invited him into the forest all those years ago, things would have ended differently. But she doubted it. Darkness grew where it would and took what it wanted. It staked its claim and never let go.And no one could pry you free of it.”

“It's not about surviving. It should be about love. When you know love...that's what makes this life worth it. When you live with it everyday. Wake up with it, hold on to it during the thunder and after a nightmare. When love is your refuge from the death that surrounds us all and when it fills you so tight that you can't express it.”

“The living used to wonder what happened after death. She said that whole religions were born and evolved around this one simple uncertainty.”