Quotes from Kristin Hannah

He'd always had a joke for Francis in the confessional, a 'sin' that could be counted on to cause a young priest to grin behind the safety of the wooden shield. Bless me, Father, for I put tuna in the chicken salad.

You can be anything you want. But you have to take a risk sometimes. Reach out.

When you grow up as I have, a lost girl without any real past, you latch on to the people who seem to love you. At least that's what I did. It started early, my holding on too tightly and needing too much. I always craved love. The unconditional, even unearned kind. I needed someone to say it to me. Not to sound poor me, but my mother never said it.

Leni knew it was crazy, but it seemed to her as if they were having a conversation without saying anything, talking about books and durable friendships and overcoming insurmountable odds. Maybe they weren't talking about Sam and Frodo at all, maybe they were talking about themselves and how they had somehow grown up and stayed kids at the same time.

Bitterness would do you good. All that smiling and pretending of yours would give me hives.

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

In Alaska you can make one mistake. One. The second one will kill you.

They hadn't loved each other enough in the time they had, and then time ran out.

I have spent a lifetime running from it, trying to forget, but now I see what a waste all that was. Antoine was Julien's father in every way that mattered. It is not biology that determines fatherhood. It is love.

The smile he gave her was barely one at all. "We are all fragile, Isabelle. It's the thing we learn in war.

When you're a mom, you learn about fear. You're always afraid. Always. About everything from cupboard doors to kidnappers to weather. There is nothing that can't hurt our kids, I swear." She turned. "The irony is they need us to be strong.

To lose love is a terrible thing," Mom said softly. "But to turn away from it is unbearable. Will you spend the rest of your life replaying it in your head? Wondering if you walked away too soon or too easily? Or if you'll ever love anyone that deeply again?

Even more important than what she gave her garden was what it gave her. In it, she found a sense of calm.

I stand up feeling my new role. I am a motherless daughter now, a sisterless woman. There is no one left of the family I was born into; there is only the family I have made. My mother is in all of us, though especially in me, and the dreams of my father to, so it is my job to be all of us now.

She hadn't been where it mattered, making memories with her husband and children. Maybe she'd thought time was more elastic, or love more forgiving.

And maybe that was how love was supposed to be, how life unfolded when you lived it long enough. Joy and sadness were part of the package; the trick, perhaps, was to let yourself feel all of it, but to hold on to the joy just a little more tightly because you never knew when a strong heart could just give out.

Alaska herself can be Sleeping Beauty one minute and a bitch with a sawed-off shotgun the next.

wasn't the fear that mattered in life. It was the choices made when you were afraid. You were brave because of your fear, not in spite of it.

Grief had become her silent sidekick. She felt its shadow beside her all the time.

For the first time in his life, he was going to be a goddamn hero.

Love. Family. Laughter. That's what I remember when it's all said and done. For so much of my life I thought I didn't do enough or want enough. I guess I can be forgiven for my stupidity. I was young. I want my children to know how proud I am of them, and how proud I am of me. We were everything we needed—you and Daddy

For years, she'd mistaken habit and affection for true love. She had assumed that the love she gave her husband was a reflection of the love he felt for her, and now, because of her blindness, she was alone.

She was so unlike the other women he'd slept with. Course, they were whores, mostly...

You know what the say about finding a man in Alaska - the odds are good, but the goods are odd." - The Great Alone