Look Catalog

40 Shameless Ryan O'Connell Quotes That Will Guide You Through Your 20s

Hon.
Heidi Priebe
October 10, 2016
“As far as I can tell, there are three guarantees in life: death, taxes, and someone deciding they don't love you anymore.”
— Ryan O'Connell, I'm Special: And Other Lies We Tell Ourselves
Tagged: Pessimism, Harsh Truths, Reality Check
“Looking at what my father had written, I realized a comforting truth: being a fuckup in your twenties is totally timeless. ”
— Ryan O'Connell, I'm Special: And Other Lies We Tell Ourselves
Tagged: humor, Hot Mess, Twenties
“When you’re in your 20s, you change. A lot. I know this sounds ridiculous, but like I’m 26 and whenever I meet someone who’s 22 or 23 — even if I love them — I’m just like, “Go back into the oven because you aren’t done yet.” Three years do make a major difference in your 20s because every year is like a giant epiphany.”
— Ryan O'Connell, 3 Reasons Why Being In A Relationship In Your 20s Is Hard
Tagged: Love, Relationships, Change, Growing Up, Falling In Love, Twenty-Something, Dating, Age Difference
“Life is so messy and difficult. The best you can really hope for is that you have a friend who anchors you and makes you feel safe. It helps if this friend has really great hair too.”
— Ryan O'Connell, You Can’t Get Through Your 20s Without A Best Friend
Tagged: Friendship, Love, Best Friends, Friends
“If you’re fortunate enough, you will find a person who sees this world in the exact same way that you do.”
— Ryan O'Connell, You Can’t Get Through Your 20s Without A Best Friend
Tagged: Friendship, Life, Friends, Love
“All of those fears you had in the past, those vintage anxieties that kept you up in 2004, where are they now? That’s right, they’re gone. You killed all of them. You got over it. You lived.”
— Ryan O'Connell, Why You Shouldn’t Be So Freaked Out About Your Future
Tagged: Future, Fear, Anxiety
“The only way you can ensure having a good future is by living a good present. That’s it. That’s the secret to getting exactly what you want out of life.”
— Ryan O'Connell, Why You Shouldn’t Be So Freaked Out About Your Future
Tagged: Future, present, live in the moment, Life
“It’s taboo to admit that you’re lonely.”
— Ryan O'Connell, You're Not Making The Most Out Of Your Twenties
Tagged: Loneliness, Friendship, Belonging, Meaning, Relationships, Alone
“Stop thinking that everyone is having more sex than you, that everyone has more friends than you, that everyone out is having more fun than you. Not because it’s not true (it might be!) but because that kind of thinking leaves you frozen.”
— Ryan O'Connell, You're Not Making The Most Out Of Your Twenties
Tagged: Sex, Relationships, Envy, Friendship, Friends, Jealousy, Change, Fear
“I don’t know if you ever get better. I don’t know if a person can just wake up one day and decide to be an active participant in their life. I’d like to think so. I’d like to think that people get better each and every day but that’s not really true. People get worse and it’s their stories that end up getting forgotten because we can’t stand an unhappy ending. The sick have to get better. Our normalcy depends upon it.”
— Ryan O'Connell, You’re Not Making The Most Out Of Your 20s
Tagged: Getting Better, Change, normalcy, sickness
“Do you want it bad enough? Does the fear of being filled with regret in your thirties trump your fear of living today?”
— Ryan O'Connell, You’re Not Making The Most Out Of Your 20s
Tagged: Life, chances, Regret, Taking Chances, Growing Up, 20s, 30s
“Falling in love is nature’s drug and you can OD on it.”
— Ryan O'Connell, 25 Things You Should Know About Love
Tagged: Love, Drug, Relationships, Infatuation, Obsession
“It’s so painful to have loved someone once and then never again. Sometimes you’ll wish it never happened just so you didn’t know how good it felt. Then you remember that quote ‘It’s better to have loved and lost than to have ever loved at all’ and you’re like, ‘okay, fine.'”
— Ryan O'Connell, 25 Things You Should Know About Love
Tagged: Love, humor, Breakups, Pain, Relationships
“It is possible to love someone who doesn’t love you back. It’s not a full love, it doesn’t have a whole lot of depth, but it’s still there.”
— Ryan O'Connell, 25 Things You Should Know About Love
Tagged: Love, Unrequited Love, Relationships, Healthy Love
“You will never love someone quite the same way you do the first time. In most cases, this is a good thing. The first time is fucking insane.”
— Ryan O'Connell, 25 Things You Should Know About Love
Tagged: Love, First Love, Relationships, Falling In Love
“Everyone is an idiot when it comes to matters of the heart. Love is the great equalizer. Whenever you feel intimidated by someone’s coolness, just imagine them sobbing in their bedroom after someone broke their heart. I guarantee it’s happened.”
— Ryan O'Connell, 25 Things You Should Know About Love
Tagged: Love, Relationships, Heartbreak, Heartache
“Everyone wants to be loved. Everyone wants to rely on someone. For a lot of people, it’s their Achilles heel. Love is the reason why they made most of their mistakes.”
— Ryan O'Connell, 25 Things You Should Know About Love
Tagged: Love, Relationships, Equalizer, Mistakes
“Finding love is the unconscious motivator for a lot of the things we do. It’s why we work out, it’s why we go to a bar on a Saturday night when we really don’t want to, it’s why we agree to meet strangers off the internet.”
— Ryan O'Connell, 25 Things You Should Know About Love
Tagged: Love, motivation, Relationships
“Love will make you into the best and worst version of yourself, often in the same night.”
— Ryan O'Connell, 25 Things You Should Know About Love
Tagged: Love, Relationships
“There will be periods in your life when sex will answer a lot of questions for you. It will make everything clearer. There will also be times, however, when sex enables your downfall and leaves you feeling more devastated and confused than you were to begin with. That’s just the way it is. Sex serves as a refection of where you’re currently at.”
— Ryan O'Connell, Something Like A Love Poem
Tagged: Love, Sex, Self-Concept, Self-Love
“Where were you the first time sex left you hating yourself? When was the first time sex left you feeling drained instead of full, warm, and happy?”
— Ryan O'Connell, Something Like A Love Poem
Tagged: Sex
“I don’t believe in love at first sight but I do believe in seeing someone from across the room and knowing instantly that they’re going to matter to you. They’re going to play a major role in your life.”
— Ryan O’Connell, Something Like A Love Poem
Tagged: Love at First Sight, Relationships, Lust, Love
“It’s hard for me to explain this to you in a way that will make one hundo percent sense, but I’ll try. Until recently, maybe in the last year or so, I didn’t understand that life could be good. It wasn’t like I was against happiness. I just didn’t think it was an option for someone like me.”
— Ryan O'Connell, The Twenties We All Deserve
Tagged: Happiness, Life
“The things you have in your life that make you feel unlovable and small can go away. They have as much power as you give them.”
— Ryan O'Connell, The Twenties We All Deserve
Tagged: Life, Love, Self-Love, Being Loved, Unloveable, Self-Acceptance
“You’re going to lose touch with a lot of your friends. With some people, it will be expected but with others it will feel like a punch to the stomach. No friendship is truly safe in your twenties. Don’t worry though. You’ll end up with the ones that matter. If someone’s no longer in your life, it’s for a reason.”
— Ryan O'Connell, 25 Things I’ve Learned In My 20s
Tagged: Friendship, Twenties, Losing Friends
“You’ll be jealous of everyone who’s more successful than you. That’s okay. Just transfer that jealousy into something productive, like working really hard so you can one day eclipse them and make them feel jealous of YOU.”
— Ryan O'Connell, 25 Things I’ve Learned In My 20s
Tagged: Jealousy, Success, Working Hard, Productivity
“You’re going to betray your convictions. You’re going to feel shame. You’re going to continue to put yourself in situations that aren’t good for you. And then, slowly but surely, it will become less frequent. It might not ever go away completely but it won’t be as bad. In the meantime, stop shame spiraling about it. It gets you nowhere.”
— Ryan O'Connell, 25 Things I’ve Learned In My 20s
Tagged: Shame, Choices, Making The Wrong Choices, morals, Life, Convictions
“Loving yourself is hard. Hating yourself is harder.”
— Ryan O'Connell, 25 Things I’ve Learned In My 20s
Tagged: Love, Hate, Self-Love, Self-Acceptance, Self-hatred
“You’ll always care about your first love. That doesn’t make you crazy, it just makes you human. When relationships end, it’s not so cut and dry. You carry everyone you’ve ever loved into every relationship thereafter.”
— Ryan O'Connell, 25 Things I’ve Learned In My 20s
Tagged: Relationships, Love, First Love, Falling In Love
“You’ll have moments with someone that are so intense, it’ll feel like you’ve been electrocuted back to life. You’ll hold on to these moments for a long time. They’ll give you hope when you’re going through the motions.”
— Ryan O'Connell, 25 Things I’ve Learned In My 20s
Tagged: Happiness, Joy, Life, 20s