Kristin Hannah Quotes

“Do you love him?” “How would I know?” “You’d know.”

“If I have learned anything in this long life of mine, it is this: in love we find out who we want to be; in war we find out who we are.”

“Wounds heal. Love lasts. We remain.”

“But love has to be stronger than hate, or there is no future for us.”

“I always thought it was what I wanted: to be loved and admired. Now I think perhaps I’d like to be known.”

“Some stories don’t have happy endings. Even love stories. Maybe especially love stories.”

“Love. It was the beginning and end of everything, the foundation and the ceiling and the air in between.”

“Perhaps that’s why I find myself looking backward. The past has a clarity I can no longer see in the present.”

“I am a mother and mothers don’t have the luxury of falling apart in front of their children, even when they are afraid, even when their children are adults.”

“I had forgotten how gently time passes in Paris. As lively as the city is, there’s a stillness to it, a peace that lures you in. In Paris, with a glass of wine in your hand, you can just be.”

“She wanted to bottle how safe she felt in this moment, so she could drink of it later when loneliness and fear left her parched.”

“She was so tired of being strong.”

“She has a steel exterior, but it protects a candyfloss heart.”

“If there’s one thing I never do, it’s stop.”

“Vianne didn’t hesitate. She knew now that no one could be neutral—not anymore—and as afraid as she was of risking Sophie’s life, she was suddenly more afraid of letting her daughter grow up in a world where good people did nothing to stop evil, where a good woman could turn her back on a friend in need. She reached for the toddler, took him in her arms.”

“Ask for help when you need it, and give help when you can.”

“With all the risks they were taking, love was probably the most dangerous choice of all.”

“Don’t think about who they are. Think about who you are and what sacrifices you can live with and what will break you.”

“We are all fragile, Isabelle. It’s the thing we learn in war.”

“She realized that the landscape of a woman’s soul could change as quickly as a world at war.”

“She wanted to say “Don’t leave me”, but she couldn’t do it, not again. She was so tired of begging people to love her.”

“She was so tired of being considered disposable.”

“The failing of a student to learn is the failing of the teacher to teach.”

“I loved you both with all of my damaged heart.”

“Men tell stories,” I say. It is the truest, simplest answer to his question. “Women get on with it.”

“In his face, I see the whole of my life. I see a baby who came to me long after I’d given up … and a hint of the beauty I once had. I see … my life in his eyes.”

“A broken heart hurts as badly in wartime as in peace.”

“At my age, I should not be afraid of anything—certainly not my own past.”

“That was the thing about best friends. Like sisters and mothers, they could piss you off and make you cry and break your heart, but in the end, when the chips were down, they were there, making you laugh even in your darkest hours. ”

“To make real friends you have to put yourself out there. Sometimes people will let you down, but you can’t let that stop you. If you get hurt, you just pick yourself up, dust off your feelings, and try again.”

“That was what a best friend did: hold up a mirror and show you your heart.”

“Sometimes being a good friend means saying nothing.”

“One thing I can tell you for sure is this: we only regret what we don’t do in life.”

“This is the problem with forever friends. They know too much.”

“Thoughts - even fears - were airy things, formless until you made them solid with your voice and once given that weight, they could crush you.”

“She hadn’t realized how much she’d needed a dream, but it had transformed her, changed her from poor motherless and abandoned Tully to a girl poised to take on the world. The goal made her life story unimportant, gave her something to reach for, to hang on to.”

“Of course you can fall in love. You just have to let yourself. They don’t call it falling for nothing.”

“When you get . . . to the end, you see that love and family are all there is. Nothing else matters.”

“I guess no one stays friends for more than thirty years without broken hearts along the way.”

“What mattered was not caring. “And the best way not to care was to surround yourself with noise and people.”

“What good did it do to light the world on fire if she had to watch the glow alone?”

“She knew, too, that love didn’t evaporate. It faded, perhaps, lost its weight like bones left out in the sun, but it didn’t go away.”

“The at-home mother’s life: it was a race with no finish line.”

“Then he left her there, standing alone, surrounded by word ghosts; things she could have said.”

“She knew this pain would fade again; like a sunburn, it would heal itself and leave her slightly more protected from the glare.”

“How do you keep hold of a dream like that?” “With both hands.”

“So now books were her only friends. She’d read Lord of the Rings so often she could recite whole scenes by memory. “It was not a skill that aided one in becoming popular.”

“It was true; always had been. Friendships were like marriages in that way. Routines and patterns were poured early and hardened like cement.”

“Their friendship was more important than any relationship. Guys would come and go; girlfriends were forever.”

“It’s never good to sit around and wait for someone or something to change your life.”

“That was her mistake. She’d pinned her happiness to a teenage girl’s chest. Idiot. The realization made her almost smile. She certainly knew better than that.”

“The Mularkeys all saw love as a durable, reliable thing, easy to recognize ... Love could be more fragile than a sparrow’s bone.”

“Some lives are not ours to hold on to; God makes His choices without us.”

“I came west in search of a better life, but my American dream was turned into a nightmare by poverty and hardship and greed.”

“Remember, cara, hard times don’t last. Land and family do.”

“Life is tough. You need to be tougher or it will turn you inside out.”

“He’d made her feel more beautiful in one minute than the rest of the world had in twenty-five years.”

“There was a pain that came with constant disapproval; a sense of having lost something unnamed, unknown.”

“Don’t worry about dying, Elsa. Worry about not living. Be brave.”

“She knew now what she hadn’t known before, hadn’t even suspected: she would do anything, suffer anything, to be loved, even if it was just for a night.”

“When your children were dying, you did anything to save them, even walk over mountains and across deserts.”

“For a man who had two religions - God and the land - he was dying a little each day, disappointed by them both.”