Kristin Hannah

“Memories are who we are, Tul. In the end, that’s all the luggage you take with you. Love and memories are what last.”

“As mothers and daughters, we are connected with one another. My mother is the bones of my spine, keeping me straight and true. She is my blood, making sure it runs rich and strong. She is the beating of my heart. I cannot now imagine a life without her.”

“A daughter without her mother is a woman broken. It is a loss that turns to arthritis and settles deep into her bones.”

“...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.”

“My skin has the crinkled appearance of wax paper that someone has tried to flatten and reuse. My eyes fail me often—in the darkness, when headlights flash, when rain falls. It is unnerving, this new unreliability in my vision. Perhaps that’s why I find myself looking backward. The past has a clarity I can no longer see in the present.”

“Those are exactly the kind of memories I try to avoid, but they're like abestos: invisible and deadly. You need special gear to get rid of them.”

“She hadn't realized how much she'd needed a dream, but it had transformed her, changed her from poor motherless and abandoned Tully to a girl poised to take on the world. The goal made her life story unimportant, gave her something to reach for, to hang on to”

“She had tried to be loved by him; more important, she had tried to keep loving him, but in the end, one was impossible as the other.”

“The next morning, Angie woke with the sun...Her eyes felt gritty and swollen.Once again she'd watered her mattress with memories.”

“The hallmark of my books is the relationships that define women's lives.”

“Do you love him?"How would I know?"You'd know.”

“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.”

“He'd learned in the past few months that telling a girl what to wear--even one the size of a golf club--was a bad idea. Histrionics often followed.”

“To make real friends you have to put yourself out there. Sometimes people will let you down, but you can't let that stop you. If you get hurt, you just pick yourself up, dust off your feelings, and try again.”

“I am a mother and mothers don’t have the luxury of falling apart in front of their children, even when they are afraid, even when their children are adults.”

“What I know now about life is this: your mother is a part of everything you do and everything you are.”

“Whenever I write about motherhood - and I write about it a lot - I am drawing on my experiences as a mother and also my experiences as a daughter.”

“Sitting around and waiting for your muse is not the best choice.”

“It is a kiss that, once begun, never really ends. Interrupted, yes. Paused, certainly. But from that very moment onward, Vera sees the whole of her life as only a breath away from kissing him again. On that night in the park, they begin the delicate task of binding their souls together, creating a whole comprising their separate halves.”

“I am such a Pacific Northwest girl.”