Quotes from Kristin Hannah

It had been years since she question his fidelity, but he'd stepped on to the old fame track again, and that was where the road had taken them before. Infidelity could be forgiven, but forgetting it was impossible. Strangely, that wasn't what bothered her the most. What bothered her was that she didn't really care.

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. All along the Seine, street lamps come on, apartment windows turn golden. "It's seven," Julien says, and I realize that he has been keeping time all along, waiting. He is so American. No sitting idle, forgetting oneself, not for this young man of mine.

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

She had counted on a lifetime to teach her children what they needed to know, but she didn't have the gift of grace and time. Still, she had given them what mattered: they were loved and they knew it. Everything else was decoration. Love remains.

Stacey: "I'm surprised you haven't thrown me out." Comfort: "At your current weight, I'd need some sort of catapult.

This fear was unbearable. It unwrapped who she was, as neatly as he'd unwound her bandage, leaving too much pain and ugliness exposed. Nerve endings; he'd said they were the problem [causing phantom pain in the amputated limb]." Things that cut off, that ended abruptly or died--like parents and marriages--kept hurting forever.

Lauren: "Can I ask you a question?" Angie: "Generally that's a question one should say no to. Often hell no.

There's nothing wrong with being scared...It happens to all of us. What's wrong is if we don't try things because we're afraid. We can't hide away from the things that scare us.

He wanted to be angry, to scream and rail and feel honest-to-God outrage. But he wasn't that kind of man. His love for Mikaela was more than just an emotion; it was the sum total of who he was. This one thing he knew above everything else. He loved Mikaela too much. Which in its way was as bad as loving someone not enough.

Tragedy was like that, a razor that sliced through time, severing the now from the before, incising the what-might-have-been from reality as cleanly as any surgeon's blade.

The things your parents say and the things your husband doesn't say become a mirror, don't they? You see yourself as they see you, and no matter how far you come, you bring that mirror with you.

Rain Valley newcomers pretty much fell into two groups: people running away from something and people running away from everything.

Poverty was a soul-crushing thing. A cave that tightened around you, its pinprick of light closing a little more at the end of each desperate, unchanged day.

To damage the earth is to damage your children. —WENDELL BERRY, FARMER AND POET

She'd been criticized for holding the reins of parenthood too tightly, of controlling her children too completely, but she didn't know how to let go. From the moment she'd first decided to become a mother, it had been an epic battle.

She needed Matthew, but not to save her or complete her or reinvent her. Her love for him was the clearest, cleanest, strongest emotion she'd ever felt. It was like opening your eyes or growing up, realizing that you had it in you to love like this. Forever. For all time. Or for all the time you had.

Terrible beautiful combination of happiness and pain.

life—and love—can be gone any second. When you had it, you needed to hang on with all your strength and savor every second.

How can I possibly sleep at a time like this?" He sighed. "You will learn that a lot of things are possible.

In time, his grief had turned to anger and then drifted toward sorrow, and now, finally, it had settled into a lingering sadness that was a part of him, not the whole.

Fifteen minutes later, Betsy came thundering down the stairs. "I'm going to the mall with Sierra to see a movie." Michael leaned forward, switched off the television. "Can you please rephrase that in the form of a question?" "Sure. Can I have some money?

Here's what I want you to know: I loved my life. For so long I was waiting for it to start, waiting for more. It seemed like all I did was drive and shop and wait. But you know what? I didn't miss a thing with my family. Not a moment. I was there for all of it. That's what I'll remember, and they'll have each other.

I don't know why it's so easy for me to forget how much I love her. We start fighting, and…" "Sisters.

Samwise Gamgee would never leave Frodo like this. No hero would ever do this. But books were only a reflection of real life, not the thing itself.