Top 150 Elin Hilderbrand Quotes (2024 Update)
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101. “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

102. “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

103. “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

104. “The sandwiches were beautiful pinwheels of color: avocado, tomato and bacon, goat cheese and roasted red pepper, roast beef, cucumber, and horseradish cream.”

— Elin Hilderbrand

105. “What are we talking about in 2023? We are talking about our shared grief. We are talking about our collective gratitude.”

— Elin Hilderbrand

106. “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

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

— Elin Hilderbrand

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

— 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 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

111. “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

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

— Elin Hilderbrand

113. “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

114. “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

115. “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

116. “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

117. “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

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

— Elin Hilderbrand

119. “You can give birth to a beautiful, perfect human being, but requited love isn’t guaranteed for her – or for any of us.”

— Elin Hilderbrand

120. “I hope he’s happy – because if he’s not happy, then what’s the point of staying with her?”

— Elin Hilderbrand

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

— Elin Hilderbrand

122. “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

123. “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

124. “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

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

— Elin Hilderbrand

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

— Elin Hilderbrand

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

— Elin Hilderbrand

128. “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

129. “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

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

— Elin Hilderbrand

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

— Elin Hilderbrand

132. “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

133. “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

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

— Elin Hilderbrand

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

— Elin Hilderbrand

136. “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

137. “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

138. “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

139. “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

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

— Elin Hilderbrand

141. “He will get it all out – his love, his denial, his shame, his rage, his sadness, his grief. And then, once he’s an empty vessel, he can accept his heartbreak, accept himself, and start to heal. When.”

— Elin Hilderbrand

142. “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

143. “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

144. “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

145. “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

146. “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

147. “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

148. “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

149. “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

150. “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