Jennifer Ryan Quotes & Sayings

He didn't want to be one more burden, but the person who held her up, the soft place she fell, the reason she endured and was happy. — Jennifer Ryan

She didn't say anything, just a long, quiet "shhhh," as if she had learned that the troubles of the world could be absorbed and deafened by slow, steady wistfulness, and I suddenly understood that she'd been silencing the noise for the past twenty years. — Jennifer Ryan

Human nature defeats me sometimes, how greed and spite can lurk so divisively around the utmost courage and sacrifice. — Jennifer Ryan

And I realized that this is what it's like to be an adult, learning to pick from a lot of bad choices and do the best you can with that dreadful compromise. Learning to smile, to put your best foot forward, when the world around you seems to have collapsed in its entirety, become a place of isolation, a sepia photograph of its former illusion. — Jennifer Ryan

I took a deep breath of the syrupy sweetness of summer, suffused with bees and birds, and I thought to myself how beautiful this world can be. How lucky we are to be here, to be part of it, for however long we have. — Jennifer Ryan

If we don't think about our death until we die, how can we decide how we want to live? — Jennifer Ryan

Jack prepared another needle with the antibiotics.
"You're not sticking me with that."
"Come on. It'll only hurt for a second, and I'll get to look under that sheet again."
"Jack, I'm not kidding. I don't like shots. Enough already."
"You need the medicine. Now gimme your cheek."
"Ha. Ha. Very funny."
She let him give her the shot and stuck her tongue out when he finished. He loved how easily she made him laugh.
"Smart ass."
"Sore ass is more like it." — Jennifer Ryan

Perhaps there is something good that had come from this war: everything has been turned around, all the unfairness made grimly plain. It has given us everyday women a voice - dared us to stand up for ourselves, and to stand up for others. We have less to lose in this world of chaos and death, after all. — Jennifer Ryan

Music takes us out of ourselves, away from our worries and tragedies, helps us look into a different world, a bigger picture. All those cadences and beautiful chord changes, every one of them makes you feel a different splendor of life. — Jennifer Ryan

A sense of responsibility - or was it guilt? - hung over me, that I was in some way at fault because of cowering to all these pompous men all these years, when I should have had the bravery to reclaim my own mind. That if we women had done this years ago, before the last war, before this one, we'd be in a very different world. — Jennifer Ryan

you had sex with a viper, — Jennifer Ryan

And isn't love between two people better than hatred, in this world of violence and mourning? There seemed to me a fragile kindness in their love that survived through this poisonous war. Even though one of them hadn't. — Jennifer Ryan

I'm sorry if I made you think I don't trust you."
"You don't. Not yet. And that's okay. Just stop assuming I'm only out to hurt you, or take something you're not willing to give. If you're not interested, all you have to do is say so. I can't say I won't be disappointed, but I'll leave you alone if that's what you want."
"I am interested," she said more boldly than she actually felt. "Please understand, my caution comes from experience. You've already proven you're not like the asshole. I'm glad you came last night. I'm glad you're still here this morning."
"See, I'm not so hard to like," he teased, putting her at ease after the tense moments they'd just shared. — Jennifer Ryan

That's what a real family does, right? You're accepted no matter what. You're included every time you show up. That's how it should be. — Jennifer Ryan

her body moving steadily with his, not a bit of self-conscious shyness or reservation in her movements. He ran his hands over both her breasts, sat up and took one hard nipple into his mouth. — Jennifer Ryan

Then I looked out onto the horizon myself and realized that loss is the same wherever you go: overwhelming, inexorable, deafening. How resilient human beings are that we can learn slowly to carry on when we are left all alone, left to fill the void as best we can. Or disappear into it. — Jennifer Ryan

You need to find where you fit in this world, where you are happiest, where you can make a difference. And don't be afraid of change. — Jennifer Ryan

That's the same thing I imagine every parent faces when they have a child. You'll be great, Kate. Because it matters to you, you'll do your best to be everything he needs. — Jennifer Ryan