Top 150 Elin Hilderbrand Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “To be early is to be on time, to be on time is to be late, to be late is to be forgotten.”

— Elin Hilderbrand

2. “Sometimes you regret the things you do, but they’re over and done. Regretting the things you didn’t do is tougher because they’re still out there, haunting you with the what ifs.”

— Elin Hilderbrand

3. “Like Virginia Woolf said, every woman writer needs five hundred pounds a year and a room of one’s own.”

— Elin Hilderbrand

4. “In the midst of winter, I found there was, within me, an invincible summer.”

— Elin Hilderbrand

5. “Listen. Observe. Absorb.”

— Elin Hilderbrand

6. “Guilt and no guilt: these were the worst things. The only thing worse than the guilt was the fear of getting caught.”

— Elin Hilderbrand

7. “Hard things are hard.”

— Elin Hilderbrand

8. “Forgiveness is a powerful thing.”

— Elin Hilderbrand

9. “It is very difficult, if not impossible, to relinquish and attach at the same time.”

— Elin Hilderbrand

10. “Hope had been in the NICU for a week before she was named. The name her parents had picked out was Allison – Allegra and Allison, for nauseating twin symmetry – but after all that transpired, they changed their minds and decided to call her Hope, no explanation needed. She was a survivor, an underdog who had prevailed;.”

— Elin Hilderbrand

11. “Even if Willa lives to be a hundred and is surrounded by children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren, she will still miss her mother. So all she can hope for are unexpected moments of grace.”

— Elin Hilderbrand

12. “You know who invented the twist, right?” asked the man next to him. “It was John D. Rockefeller. He was a germophobe, and citrus was a natural disinfectant, so Rockefeller always asked his bartenders to run a lemon peel around the rim of his glass.” Eddie.”

— Elin Hilderbrand

13. “A garden is not a matter of life or death. It is far more important than that.”

— Elin Hilderbrand

14. “I am a summer person.”

— Elin Hilderbrand

15. “Iowa City is okay as Midwestern cities go, but theres no food, no culture, no ocean.”

— Elin Hilderbrand

16. “Being president of the United States is the most stressful, thankless job in the world and Margaret can’t fathom why anyone would voluntarily pursue it.”

— Elin Hilderbrand

17. “Some people don’t like being happy. They’re much more comfortable when they have a problem.”

— Elin Hilderbrand

18. “The right choice was usually the more difficult one.”

— Elin Hilderbrand

19. “They always stayed at the beach to enjoy the golden hour, that hour when the sun sank low enough to spangle the water and make everything look as if it had been dipped in honey.”

— Elin Hilderbrand

20. “Nobody knows where it comes from, and nobody knows where it goes.’ Love doesn’t make sense most of the time and that’s what’s so wonderful about it.”

— Elin Hilderbrand

21. “And maybe, just maybe, this summer will end up being one that people write songs about.”

— Elin Hilderbrand

22. “The shoes had come to define him as he proceeded to break every sprinting record at New Bedford High School and other high schools across the Commonwealth, earning himself the nickname Fast Eddie.”

— Elin Hilderbrand

23. “Some women, Ava realizes, would crumple in a pile and feel sorry for themselves, but not Jennifer. Jennifer puts on her gnome sweater.”

— Elin Hilderbrand

24. “June and July are foggy months. In the early summer on Nantucket, warm moist air flows over the colder water. The moist air cools to its dew point and a cloud forms at the water’s surface. This is fog.”

— Elin Hilderbrand

25. “And that’s the thing about marriage. It can look perfect to people from the outside but be utterly imperfect on the inside. The reverse is true as well. No one knows what goes on in a marriage except for the two people living in it.”

— Elin Hilderbrand

26. “Fear gripped her like hands around the neck, the way it could only happen in an unfamiliar room in the pitch black of night.”

— Elin Hilderbrand

27. “This is foxhole religion at its most basic. The only person who wants the soldier to live more than the soldier himself is the soldier’s mother.”

— Elin Hilderbrand

28. “There is nothing more terrible, she has decided, than the ferocity with which humans can love.”

— Elin Hilderbrand

29. “Kirby has learned that no one can judge a relationship except for the two people in it.”

— Elin Hilderbrand

30. “Jennifer’s three cardinal tree-decorating rules: 1. When you think you have enough white lights, add three more strands. 2. Glass-ball ornaments are placed all the way inside the tree, near the trunk, so that the tree appears to glow from within. 3. Showpiece and heirloom ornaments go on the ends of the branches. In.”

— Elin Hilderbrand

31. “The only person who wants the soldier to live more than the soldier himself is the soldier’s mother. Kate.”

— Elin Hilderbrand

32. “Having a sister doesn’t always mean an automatic best friend.”

— Elin Hilderbrand

33. “She yearned to be left alone with her interior life rather than to explain it.”

— Elin Hilderbrand

34. “Zack, who has a penchant for arcane knowledge, informs Ava that a family of a boy followed by a girl is known as the king’s choice. There is the son to carry on the family name, and the daughter to marry off and create a dynasty.”

— Elin Hilderbrand

35. “The special was a tomato salad with bacon, basil, and blue cheese. It was a work of art. Fiona had found a rainbow of heirloom tomatoes- red, orange, yellow, green, purple, yellow with green stripes- and she stacked them on the plate in a tower as colorful as children’s blocks.”

— Elin Hilderbrand

36. “Never let a man be responsible for your happiness.”

— Elin Hilderbrand

37. “Do all brilliant ideas seem brilliant from the very beginning, or do they seem far-fetched until they come into clearer focus?”

— Elin Hilderbrand

38. “Agnes like she was a baby bird. Dabney felt a combination of.”

— Elin Hilderbrand

39. “She is venomous like this because she hurts.”

— Elin Hilderbrand

40. “She had thought that ‘depression’ would be like sitting in a rocking chair and not being able to make it move. She had thought it would descend over her like a fog, turning things fuzzy, coloring them gray. But depression was active, it paced back and forth wringing its hands. She couldn’t stop thinking; she couldn’t find her way free from apprehension.”

— Elin Hilderbrand

41. “The body of water between Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket is the Muskeget Channel. “I.”

— Elin Hilderbrand

42. “Cash loves his brother, in theory. In practice, he can’t stand the guy.”

— Elin Hilderbrand

43. “The moment their eyes meet, the moment their hands touch. That certainty. That recognition. You. You are the one. This is what it feels like. Nothing, as it turns out, can take the place of love.”

— Elin Hilderbrand

44. “The charitable acts that count the most, Greer believes, are those done without anyone knowing.”

— Elin Hilderbrand

45. “I want you to do what siblings are supposed to do – hate your parents but love each other!”

— Elin Hilderbrand

46. “Sadness comes long after all of the other, more difficult and destructive emotions have passed.”

— Elin Hilderbrand

47. “The Greydon House is the new hot spot on Nantucket; Bart remembers when it was his dentist’s office. It has been reimagined as a hotel and fine restaurant. The bar is dark paneled, the lighting is low, the furniture is ornate, and the overall effect.”

— Elin Hilderbrand

48. “Stuart and Jenna exchanged rings-platinum band for Stuart, and platinum with diamonds for Jenna, but they could have been aluminum or plastic. Expensive rings did not guarantee a happy life together.”

— Elin Hilderbrand

49. “Secrets become lies, and lies end up destroying you and everyone you care about.”

— Elin Hilderbrand

50. “It’s not a house to us. It’s a home. And it’s not a home, it’s s way of life. Our summertime happens here. This house is part of our past, it’s our present, it’ll be our future. It’s who we are.”

— Elin Hilderbrand