Quotes from Kristin Hannah

Heartache had been a part of her life so long it had become as familiar as the color of her hair or the slight curve in her spine. Sometimes it was the lens through which she viewed her world and sometimes it was the blindfold she wore so she didn't see. But it was always there. (p117)

She was so tired of being considered disposable.

When you're a mom, you learn about fear. You're always afraid. Always. About everything from cupboard doors to kidnappers to weather.

I think maybe love can just...dissolve." "No, it does not," her mother said. "So how do--" "You hang on," her mother said. "Until your hands are bleeding, and still you do not let go.

my love for you will outlive me.

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

She had been ready to love this man from the moment she first saw him. In all these years, that had never changed. They'd hurt each other, let each other down, and yet, here they were after everything, together. She needed him now, needed him to remind her that she was live, that she wasn't alone, that she hadn't lost everything.

We draw our strength from the very despair in which we have been forced to live. We shall endure. —CÉSAR CHÁVEZ

She didn't know that some hurts were like a once-broken bone. In the right weather, they could ache for a lifetime.

I didn't know how...deep love ran, how it was in your blood, not your heart, and how that same blood pumped through your veins your whole life.

She wouldn't have understood how dark a side love could have, how hiding it was the kindest thing you could do sometimes.

I'm an insomniac lately. It's one of the many prizes you find in the Cracker Jack box of a crumbling [relationship]

the failing of a student to learn is the failing of the teacher to teach.

It's not a date. I bought my own drink and I didn't shave my legs.

Young has nothing to do with love. A woman can be a girl and still know her own heart.

Sometimes being a good friend means saying nothing." "I'm supposed to watch her make a mistake?" "Sometimes, yes. And then you stand by to pick up the pieces.

Although she hadn't seen her parents for years, it turned out that a parent's disapproval was a powerful, lingering voice that shaped and defined one's self-image.

Like all motherless girls, Leni would become an emotional explorer, trying to uncover the lost part of her, the mother who carried and nurtured and loved her. Leni would become both mother and child; to her, mama would still grow and age. She would never be gone, not as long as Leni remembered her.

It doesn't hurt, it's just my body. They can't touch my soul.

We can't live other people's lives for them. Even if we love them.

Why was it so easy for men in the world to do as they wanted and so difficult for women?

And the books! She'd never seen so many. They whispered to her of unexplored worlds and unmet friends and she realized that she wasn't alone in this new world. Her friends were here, spine out, waiting for her as they always had.

They were trapped, by environment and finances, but mostly by the sick, twisted love that bound her parents together.

She knew what nightmares could do to a person and how bad memories could change who you were.