Quotes from The Dark and Hollow Places

“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.”
― Carrie Ryan, quote from The Dark and Hollow Places

“Survivors aren't always the strongest; sometimes they're the smartest, but more often simply the luckiest.”
― Carrie Ryan, quote from The Dark and Hollow Places

“It's one thing to know a truth in your head but another to understand it in your heart.”
― Carrie Ryan, quote from The Dark and Hollow Places

“The broken ones need someone to fight for them even harder.”
― Carrie Ryan, quote from The Dark and Hollow Places

“Life is never that simple. And the fact that it's not that simple to you means only one thing: You're still alive.”
― Carrie Ryan, quote from The Dark and Hollow Places

“There's one detail I've always remembered: He told me how long it takes the light from the stars to reach through space to us.
How most of the points of light we see actually no longer exist. We're just seeing the remnants of what was-- ghosts of what use to be.”
― Carrie Ryan, quote from The Dark and Hollow Places

“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.”
― Carrie Ryan, quote from The Dark and Hollow Places

“I stare at the way the tracks of her tears break across her jaw and along her neck, at how it looks like her face, once shattered, has been carefully put back together. And I wonder if that’s what my scars really are: proof that I’ve put myself back together again.”
― Carrie Ryan, quote from The Dark and Hollow Places

“What matters is what we do with the life we have.”
― Carrie Ryan, quote from The Dark and Hollow Places

“I feel as though I'm a storm inside and the waves of it can be seen in my eyes.”
― Carrie Ryan, quote from The Dark and Hollow Places

“The earth will spin, the stars will rearrange themselves around one another and the world will crawl with the dead who one day will drop into nothingness: no humans left for them to scent, no flesh for them to crave. Everything- all of us will simply cease to be.

They'll find peace only when we're all dead.”
― Carrie Ryan, quote from The Dark and Hollow Places

“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.”
― Carrie Ryan, quote from The Dark and Hollow Places

“Do you ever think it's the dead that have the happy ending? Just they don't have to worry about surviving."
"But they're dead," he says
"Yeah. That means they don't have to remember anything."
Elias shakes his head. "That means they can't ever love."
I snort. "So they don't know loss.”
― Carrie Ryan, quote from The Dark and Hollow Places

“I just sat there, staring out towards the darkness of the ocean and the starlight flashing off the crests of the waves and knew that we were all part of this bigger whole. That somehow I mattered in the course of things and a part of me would always have left its mark on this world.”
― Carrie Ryan, quote from The Dark and Hollow Places

“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.”
― Carrie Ryan, quote from The Dark and Hollow Places

“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.”
― Carrie Ryan, quote from The Dark and Hollow Places

“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.”
― Carrie Ryan, quote from The Dark and Hollow Places

“You're stubborn- anyone ever tell you that before?”
― Carrie Ryan, quote from The Dark and Hollow Places

“Do you think the dead don’t know what they’ve lost? Don’t you ever wonder why they seek human flesh? That maybe it’s their way of believing again? Of living again—if even for that one pure moment that blood pulses inside their mouths?”
― Carrie Ryan, quote from The Dark and Hollow Places

“Broken things can be made whole again. Perhaps not as they were before, but maybe stronger this time.”
― Carrie Ryan, quote from The Dark and Hollow Places

“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.”
― Carrie Ryan, quote from The Dark and Hollow Places

“...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.”
― Carrie Ryan, quote from The Dark and Hollow Places

“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.”
― Carrie Ryan, quote from The Dark and Hollow Places

“It all seems so worthless. Such a waste of lives. We've spent hundreds of years since the Return buffering the Dark City and trying to maintain it - scraping out a life that will soon be wiped out.

And what of the rest of the world that's already fallen? Stars blinking away, their light slowly fading? Somewhere out there a star's just dying and we'll never know about it. Somewhere another's being born whose light we'll never see.

The Earth will spin, the stars will rearrange themselves around one another and the world will crawl with the dead who one day will drop into nothing ness: no humans left for them to scent, no flesh for them to crave. Everything-all of us-will simply cease to be.”
― Carrie Ryan, quote from The Dark and Hollow Places

“I want to raise my hand to his cheek. I want to tell him it's okay. That it's pretty here in my head and it doesn't hurt.”
― Carrie Ryan, quote from The Dark and Hollow Places

“How did he change? What was he like before?" ...

"He was happy before.”
― Carrie Ryan, quote from The Dark and Hollow Places

“As long as there’s hope and love in this world, there will always be the living”
― Carrie Ryan, quote from The Dark and Hollow Places

“We're the winners because we get to live. Because we get to survive. Despite the pain of this life, we get to feel.”
― Carrie Ryan, quote from The Dark and Hollow Places

“—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.”
― Carrie Ryan, quote from The Dark and Hollow Places

“I've let the day-to-day existence of life blind me to dreams.”
― Carrie Ryan, quote from The Dark and Hollow Places

About the author

Popular quotes

“I don't know how you say good-bye to whom and what you love. I don't know a painless way to do it, don't know the words to capture a heart so full and a longing so intense.”
― Laura Wiess, quote from How It Ends

“If I know a song of Africa,—I thought,—of the Giraffe, and the African new moon lying on her back, of the ploughs in the fields, and the sweaty faces of the coffee-pickers, does Africa know a song of me? Would the air over the plain quiver with a colour that I had had on, or the children invent a game in which my name was, or the full moon throw a shadow over the gravel of the drive that was like me, or would the eagles of Ngong look out for me? I”
― Isak Dinesen, quote from Out of Africa / Shadows on the Grass

“And he talks about the 5 percent, which is Special Operations guys, and how, clinically, we’re all borderline sociopaths. But in my mind we’re not the ones that are messed up; it’s the other 95 percent of the population. We run toward the sound of gunfire. Like the fireman who, when everybody else is running this way, is running into the flames. A cop, anyone who does that sort of work, is in that 5 percent, that personality that we need to get that job done. And be able to do that job and rationalize it, religiously or country or however you deal with it, say, ‘Okay, that was my job, that’s why I did that. But now I’m back and I’m fine.’ ”
― Eric Blehm, quote from Fearless: The Heroic Story of One Navy SEAL's Sacrifice in the Hunt for Osama Bin Laden and the Unwavering Devotion of the Woman Who Loved Him

“Floor-to-ceiling picture windows were filled with the nighttime vista of the gleaming cities of El Paso and Juarez, obscured by large patches of human skin pasted to the glass like self-clinging decals. The odd angles and random placement looked like a macabre Picasso mosaic.”
― Anson Scott, quote from Borderland

“Brie leaned her torso fully against the stool, exposing her defenseless ass to him. A hairbrush sounded more cruel than fun.”
― Red Phoenix, quote from Brie Learns the Art of Submission: Submissive Training Center

Interesting books

About BookQuoters

BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.

We thoughtfully gather quotes from our favorite books, both classic and current, and choose the ones that are most thought-provoking. Each quote represents a book that is interesting, well written and has potential to enhance the reader’s life. We also accept submissions from our visitors and will select the quotes we feel are most appealing to the BookQuoters community.

Founded in 2023, BookQuoters has quickly become a large and vibrant community of people who share an affinity for books. Books are seen by some as a throwback to a previous world; conversely, gleaning the main ideas of a book via a quote or a quick summary is typical of the Information Age but is a habit disdained by some diehard readers. We feel that we have the best of both worlds at BookQuoters; we read books cover-to-cover but offer you some of the highlights. We hope you’ll join us.