Quotes from Jennifer Chiaverini

I've always wanted to be a writer. Ever since I learned to read, I've wanted to share stories with others the way my favorite writers shared their stories with me.

Ignorant people, whispering cruel rumors, her mother whispered. Pay them no mind.

When I was working on my first novel, 'The Quilter's Apprentice,' I knew I wanted to write about friendship, especially women's friendship and how women use friendship to sustain themselves and nurture each other.

Elizabeth Keckley was a woman of remarkable strength, courage, perseverance, and dignity. She was exceptionally talented, but also very diligent and ambitious, and together those qualities enabled her to deliver herself from slavery and become a successful businesswoman.

One can never had too many librarian friends.

Sometimes the most ordinary things are the ones we learn to miss the most.

Anna, falling in love with you was like coming home to a place I didn't realize I'd been missing all my life. You're the only person I've ever known who accepts me for who I am, right in this moment, faults and all, and isn't waiting for me to become someone else.

Perhaps Germany will serve as a warning," said Arvid. "May they learn from us to snuff out fascism in America when the first sparks arise and not delay until democracy goes up in flames all around them." "This could never happen in America. A nation that elected Franklin Delano Roosevelt would never elect a madman populist.

Ignorant people, whispering cruel rumors, her mother whispered. Pay them no mind.

She would almost prefer to fold her arms and sink into an eternal slumber, so that the great longing of her soul for peaceful rest would at last be gratified.

loving one's children does not guarantee that one will never fail them

The union of their shared lives could be a masterpiece, even if the colors of one piece clashed with another, even if uneven stitches showed, even if, from time to time, they had to pick out seams, realign the pieces, and sew them back together again. It would not be perfect, but it could be beautiful, if they worked together and persevered.

On Christmas Day, the promise of peace offered a soft and shining light in dark times, an eternal flame that warfare could not douse, nor hatred extinguish.

I fear that people do indeed know what Hitler wants, and what he intends, and that is precisely why they vote for him. Not because they misunderstand him, but because they understand him very well, and approve.

Hope is never false. One's hopes may not be fulfilled, but that doesn't not mean it was wrong to hope

We used to say he must've met you in the fiction section.

Who said you had to fill his shoes?" said Karen. "Wear your own shoes. They're bound to fit better. Walk your own path your own way and you'll be more likely to get to where you need to be".

One of the great advantages that we may derive from machinery is the check that it affords against the inattention, the idleness, or the dishonesty of human agents.

All people—white and colored, slave and free, Union and Confederate—shared a common humanity belied by their outward differences. In a time of discord, in a land torn by war, no truth was more important to remember than that.

She wanted a true partnership fueled by intellect and creativity, respect and desire.

Mr Lincoln suggested that the Lord sent us this terrible war as punishment for the offense of slavery and that the war may be a mighty scourge to rid US of it

People need stories...we use stories to teach, to learn, to make sense of the world around us. As long as we need stories, we will need books.

A quilt, like a family, doesn't have to be perfect, but it does have to be inclusive.

a family was an act of creation, the piecing together of disparate fragments into one cloth -- often harmonious, occasionally clashing and discordant, but sometimes unexpectedly beautiful and strong. Without contrast, there was no pattern... and each piece... would endure if sewn fast to the others with strong seams -- bonds of love and loyalty, traditions and faith.