Quotes from Elin Hilderbrand

Over the years, I have come to realize that no matter how satisfying fiction is, it becomes that much better when it actually happened.

My books, I will say one thing - they all have a driving narrative, and you have to turn the pages, and the way you do that is to create characters that you really love and care about and put them in a fairly dire situation.

I've tried to tell my kids: If you're reading something engrossing, you'll never, ever be bored.

I live a life very similar to my characters in that I live a full-blown summer fantasy from June to September. I go to the beach and work there every day.

I am a summer person.

Forgiveness is a powerful thing.

Guilt and no guilt: these were the worst things. The only thing worse than the guilt was the fear of getting caught.

When you peered into the windows of someone else's life, you could only guess what was going on.

If you love something, set it free. If it was meant to be, it will come back to you. But this, of course, was bullshit. If you loved something and let it go...it would (hello!) find something else to love.

To be early is to be on time, to be on time is to be late, to be late is to be forgotten.

All her life, Claire had had a problem figuring out where other people ended and she began. All her life, she'd taken on the world's hurt; she held herself responsible. But why?

And the worst thing about being young is not being able to appreciate that you're young because you aren't old enough to know any better.

It was like we had known all along that the sky was going to fall and then it fell and we pretended to be surprised.

of the things I want my daughters to know the greatest of these is love.

Never let a man be responsible for your happiness.

He has never known a woman so free from conceit, vanity, ambition, pretense. He has never known a woman so willing to show the world that she is a human being.

Sometimes you regret the things you do, but they're over and done. Regretting the things you didn't do is tougher because they're still out there, haunting you with the what ifs.

Just be aware that what you achieve doesn't matter as much as what kind of person you are

I will hold your hand and we will walk across this world, and I will sing to you and our babies, and that will be enough for me.

Women clearly felt things more deeply: they read sub-text where men saw only white space.

Some people don't like being happy. They're much more comfortable when they have a problem.

What happened when we died? How were we to know that death wasn't as profound an adventure as life was?

Perfect happiness existed, but perhaps only in small increments.

Nobody knows where it comes from, and nobody knows where it goes.' Love doesn't make sense most of the time and that's what's so wonderful about it.