Top 150 Elin Hilderbrand Quotes (2024 Update)
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101. “What are we talking about in 2023? We are talking about our shared grief. We are talking about our collective gratitude.”

— Elin Hilderbrand

102. “Did two good people do something they knew was wrong because there was some kind of magical chemistry involved? Or was it plain old human fallibility, weakness in the face of temptation?”

— Elin Hilderbrand

103. “But the secret to success for any bathroom,” Lizbet says to Jill, “isn’t how it looks; it’s how it makes the guest look.”

— Elin Hilderbrand

104. “One of the best feelings in the world was finding something you were sure you’d lost forever.”

— Elin Hilderbrand

105. “I can’t pretend to know what it feels like to lose a child, but I assume it’s the worst pain I’ve ever felt times a thousand, or times a hundred thousand.”

— Elin Hilderbrand

106. “Time remains a mystery to Margaret. A game of Monopoly can consume an afternoon, and an hour on the treadmill seems like forever. But a lifetime passes in an instant.”

— Elin Hilderbrand

107. “She wanted to unzip her body and step out of it. She wanted to be attached to a machine that would erase her memory, obliterate her guilt, wipe her clean.”

— Elin Hilderbrand

108. “There was a memory for everything, India realized; it was pointless to try to escape the memories.”

— Elin Hilderbrand

109. “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.”

— Elin Hilderbrand

110. “She weighs the decision for a moment, then butters the baguette and pops it in her mouth. It’s so delicious that she doesn’t care if they have to roll her off the island in a wheelbarrow.”

— Elin Hilderbrand

111. “Bad things can happen, terrible things. You can lose the people you love the most; you can lose homes, cars, antiques, hand-knotted silk rugs that cost five figures; you can discover that the very life you’re living is a terrific lie. And despite this, despite all this, the sun will continue to rise.”

— Elin Hilderbrand

112. “We have to hope. When I’m dying and ready to go, you know what I’m going to do? I’m going to hope with all my heart. And then I’m going to let go. Hope I don’t disappear. Hope I land somewhere safely.”

— Elin Hilderbrand

113. “What was it about life now? The people who weren’t present always seemed to be more important than the people who were.”

— Elin Hilderbrand

114. “Remember what we taught you to do when you get to the end of your rope?” “Make a knot and hang on,” Ayers says.”

— Elin Hilderbrand

115. “She is our treasure, our hope, our light, and our warmth. She is our legacy. Here’s to the two of you and your life together.”

— Elin Hilderbrand

116. “Lust is great in the bedroom, but like is better at breakfast, lunch and dinner.”

— Elin Hilderbrand

117. “Adrienne snatched an hors d’oeuvre from a passing tray. She had eaten a sausage grinder for family meal but this food was too gorgeous to pass up. She stopped at the buffet table and dipped a crab claw in a lemony mayonnaise. Her champagne was icee cold; it was crisp, like an apple. Across the tent, she saw Darla Parrish and her sister Eleanor standing in front of a table where a man was slicing gravlax.”

— Elin Hilderbrand

118. “She is not a baton to be handed back and forth between them, nor a prize to be won. She is her own person.”

— Elin Hilderbrand

119. “She wasn’t sure if they were telling her the truth; sometimes they told her things to see if she was gullible enough to believe them.”

— Elin Hilderbrand

120. “Underneath, they have chosen a Camus quote: In the midst of winter, I found there was, within me, an invincible summer.”

— Elin Hilderbrand

121. “Jack chuckles. “You can be more than one kind of person in your life,” he says. “But I’ve always been a person who loves Hollis Shaw.”

— Elin Hilderbrand

122. “After menu meeting came a delicious family meal: fried chicken with honey pecan butter, mashed potatoes, coleslaw. As Adrienne slathered her fried chicken with butter she thought happily of all the money she would save on food this summer.”

— Elin Hilderbrand

123. “Also, she doesn’t want to hear anyone else’s inspiring story about a sister-in-law who went through exactly the same thing and is now running ultramarathons. Celeste doesn’t mean to be ungenerous in her thoughts, but she has come to the chilling conclusion that we are all alone in our bodies. Irrefutably, immutably alone. And hence, no one’s story offers hope.”

— Elin Hilderbrand

124. “Does he think about us? I wonder. Or does he have a vault in his brain where he locks us, and all the feelings he has for us, away?”

— Elin Hilderbrand

125. “Jake asks if Mallory has any questions. Well, yes, she does: How is anyone expected to devote eighteen years to raising a child and then, one day, just leave him in an unfamiliar place among strangers twelve hundred miles from home?”

— Elin Hilderbrand

126. “Anyone can fall in love, but not just anyone can achieve forgiveness and acceptance and real, deep respect for his or her former partner the way these two have.”

— Elin Hilderbrand

127. “Joe was making the mustard in a twelve-quart stockpot. Adrienne watched him for a minute, in awe of the sheer volume of ingredients: a pound of dry mustard, five cups of vinegar, eight cups of sugar, a whole pound of butter, and a dozen eggs. Joe added sixteen grinds of white pepper from a pepper mill that was longer than his arm.”

— Elin Hilderbrand

128. “Hollis was raised by Tom Shaw; she can start a fire with a pile of dry leaves and a dirty look.”

— Elin Hilderbrand

129. “You need to choose bravery over shame,” Leanne says. “Humility over pride.”

— Elin Hilderbrand

130. “The greatest risk there is. The risk of parenthood. You’re a mother.”

— Elin Hilderbrand

131. “This island chooses people, Aunt Greta said. It chose Bo and me, and I think it’s chosen you as well.”

— Elin Hilderbrand

132. “Even Meredith’s attraction to Freddy had paled when compared to the real love of Meredith’s life. The steady, unconditional, fortifying love of Meredith’s father was gone forever.”

— Elin Hilderbrand

133. “Harper prefers winter, when it gets dark at three thirty and is pitch black by the time she finishes her shift. The summer sun reveals too much.”

— Elin Hilderbrand

134. “This house didn’t feel like poverty, just like a house owned by white people who’d stopped caring.”

— Elin Hilderbrand

135. “You can be more than one kind of person in your life,” he says.”

— Elin Hilderbrand

136. “All a mother wants, Margot, is for her children to be happy. And that may take different forms at different times.”

— Elin Hilderbrand

137. “What does it take to know a person? Time. It takes time.”

— Elin Hilderbrand

138. “There was the golden age, the years our children were nine, ten, eleven. Fourth and fifth grade... of course you never realize it’s the golden age until it’s over.”

— Elin Hilderbrand

139. “This was Antonio’s interpretation of “anything”: succulent black olives, sun-dried tomatoes and marinated artichokes, three kinds of salami, tiny balls of fresh mozzarella, roasted cherry tomatoes, some kind of creamy eggplant dip that made her swoon, and a basket of warm focaccia.”

— Elin Hilderbrand

140. “We didn’t choose love; it chose us, right or wrong – and realizing this, for Brenda, was a kind of answered prayer. Love was all that mattered.”

— Elin Hilderbrand

141. “What if growing up means keeping some things to herself.”

— Elin Hilderbrand

142. “She loved him, and she knew he loved her, but come on – if everyone slept with the person he or she had secretly fallen in love with, the world would be chaos.”

— Elin Hilderbrand

143. “Be honorable, wherever you are, Bart. Do the right thing instead of the easy thing.”

— Elin Hilderbrand

144. “How is it we don’t create new words when we see something that astonishes us? Why don’t we make up new words for the things that make us feel new?”

— Elin Hilderbrand

145. “They were taught in school that fear often derives from ignorance. Once you understand a situation, it becomes far less intimidating.”

— Elin Hilderbrand

146. “She needs someone to love her, clothe her, feed her, teach her right from wrong, someone to set limits and provide opportunities, someone to believe in her and be her champion.”

— Elin Hilderbrand

147. “It seemed the cruelest circumstance life had to offer – that someone she loved so profoundly could hurt her so badly and still that love did not die.”

— Elin Hilderbrand

148. “She had spent much of the previous six months hating Mick for what had happened with Brigid – but hate was not the opposite of love. Indifference was the opposite of love, and for the first time, Ayers felt like she could take Mick or leave him. Tonight, she would leave him.”

— Elin Hilderbrand

149. “She hangs up just as a text from Sofia comes in. Are you on the phone with Isaac? A chill rolls up Caroline’s spine. The loneliest place in the world, she realizes, is between two other people.”

— Elin Hilderbrand

150. “An education makes you good company for yourself.”

— Elin Hilderbrand