Quotes from Kristin Hannah

The truth of my circumstance climbs into the bed with me and takes up too much room.

Home was a state of mind, the peace that came from being who you were and living an honest life.

being a doctor was a snap compared to being a single parent.

of a nation ill-housed, ill-clad, ill-nourished.… The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little. —FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT

Now she knew better, of course. For more than a year she'd been telling herself it was okay, that she could go on without a best friend. Sometimes she even believed it.

Do you ever get tired of being strong?" "Oh, honey, of course.

The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little. —FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT

Lately, though, I find myself thinking about the war and my past, about the people I lost. Lost. It makes it sound as if I misplaced my loved ones; perhaps I left them where they don't belong and then turned away, too confused to retrace my steps. They are not lost. Nor are they in a better place. They are gone. As I approach the end of my years, I know that grief, like regret, settles into our DNA and remains forever a part of us.

As I write, I am reminded of that passage from the Bible—the one that is read at every wedding: "When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child." Now, I understand as an adult. Maybe for the first time in my life. This article would break my mother's heart, and perhaps even worse, her spirit. That didn't matter to me a week ago; in fact, I wanted to hurt her then. My only excuse: then I was a child.

The only way to fight a bully is to stand your ground. Be brave, Grandpa Walt would say. Pretend if you have to.

Does one follow a leader blindly?

Elsa heard the message but didn't care, and not caring felt good. Almost exhilarating, in fact. For once, she had not let someone else tell her where she belonged.

When times is tough and jobs is scarce, folks blame the outsider. It's human nature. And raht now, that's us. In California it used to be the Mexicans, and the Chinese before that, I think.

I know a thing or two about jealousy, how it can cut you to the bone and bring out the worst in you.

How was it possible that Elsa was close enough to her husband that she could feel the heat coming off him and smell the whiskey and cigarettes on his breath and still feel as if an ocean sloshed between them?

They both understood; every at-home mom in the world understood. Ultimately there were prices to be paid for the choices a woman made.

He hadn't realized how time could unspool the years of your life until for a second you were fourteen again, crying from a place so deep it seemed to predate you, desperate to be whole again.

People had called Isabelle impetuous for as long as she could remember. And then rash and, most lately, reckless. In the past year, she had grown up enough to see the truth of it. From earliest memory, she had acted first and thought about consequences later. Perhaps it was because she'd felt alone for so long. No one had ever been her sounding board, her best friend. She hadn't had someone with whom to strategize or work through her problems.

Time. It was the rack everything hung on: life, loss, hope, love.

No foreign sky protected me, no stranger's wing shielded my face. I stand as witness to the common lot, survivor of that time, that place. —ANNA AKHMATOVA, FROM POEMS OF AKHMATOVA, TRANSLATED BY STANLEY KUNITZ, WITH MAX HAYWARD

I don't know the right thing to do anymore. I want to protect Sophie and keep her safe, but what good is safety if she has to grow up in a world where people disappear without a trace because they pray to a different God? If I am arrested Ã¢â'¬Â¦

Girls," she whispered under her breath, wondering why it was that adolescent girls simply had to be mean to their mothers. Clearly it was normal behavior; she'd spent enough time with her friends and peers to know that. So normal it was probably part of evolution. Maybe the species needed girls who thought they were grown up at thirteen for some bizarre, hidden reason.

Mama had chosen to dig for treasure through the dirt of Dad's toxic, porous love, but not Leni. Not anymore.

The love, it comes in the beginning of her life and at the end of yours.