Top 50 Hannah Brencher Quotes (2024 Update)

1. “There is something remarkable about just the thought of someone sitting down for you. Taking out a piece of paper for you. Focusing their mind on the words they write for you. And through sloppy cursive and a cramped hand, they manage to tell you all the things that have ever mattered, in between the lines: “I care. I’m here. I see you. You’re more than just words on a screen to me.”

— Hannah Brencher

2. “Sometimes you pray, and sometimes you are the answered prayer.”

— Hannah Brencher

3. “She didn’t know if it was God. She wasn’t really sure what to call it. She just knew she believe in unconditional love. And that was really all that mattered.”

— Hannah Brencher

4. “All those dotted lines were just the parts of the story where she would get on the ground and get her hands dirty with the mess of it all. The mess and the glory of other people’s hearts and heart songs. She would learn it would take grit, and guts, and courage to make a difference. But the world will always need people who care enough to make a difference, so she needed to not miss her casting call.”

— Hannah Brencher

5. “I cried because sometimes no matter what you try to hide behind – letters or texts or emails or a busy schedule – life still finds a way to barrel through all the distractions. And life still hurts. Even though it’s beautiful.”

— Hannah Brencher

6. “And I learned from her that it is one thing to be the girl on fire, but it is entirely another thing to be the girl who manages to set the world on fire with all the quiet and beautiful things she does.”

— Hannah Brencher

7. “The two had very little figured out. They were trying though. They fell in love. They looked for God. They loved constructing miracles out of the mundane. Above all things, they cheered for each other. And they made each other stronger. And that meant everything.”

— Hannah Brencher

8. “I learned vulnerability is a bit like those Russian nesting dolls, the ones that get smaller and smaller in size when you twist the top off and pull another one out. In the end, you’re left with the tiniest dull, that one nugget. No more layers to take off. Nothing left but a surprise, the surprise of finding out the littlest doll is the most solid of them all. It doesn’t hide inside of itself.”

— Hannah Brencher

9. “Finally, finally, this is what bravery looks like. This is what courage looks like. It has nothing to do with dominating the day, every single day. It has to do with showing up and speaking truth. One true sentence after one true sentence.”

— Hannah Brencher

10. “But maybe that is why some people walk into your life – to tip you over and pour you out. Maybe some people storm into your life just to tell you they’re not supposed to be there. That you can’t take them or anyone with you wherever you’re going next. Maybe not every person we encounter is a love story. Maybe some are wake-up calls.”

— Hannah Brencher

11. “You’re worth it. You are absolutely, unbelievably worth it and you were made for mighty things. Keep pushing on. Keep pressing. Don’t let anyone in this wide, wide world ever try to snuff out the light you bring. You have to know it matters. The world is going to try to convince you otherwise but don’t listen. Please. Don’t. Listen. You are a marvel. It matters that you are here.”

— Hannah Brencher

12. “One day I will lend this heart of mine out – like a well-read library book – to someone who’ll decide to rip the return date straight out of the inner binding and never let me go.”

— Hannah Brencher

13. “I know you’re worried about me. Not because you think I am incapable but because you secretly have always worried that life would go by without my ever learning how to stomp in the puddles or fall in love. I can promise you I’ll learn. If anyone is a teacher for that kind of stuff, it has got to be New York.”

— Hannah Brencher

14. “That’s why I wanted to be a writer – because someone I loved told me I could be one.”

— Hannah Brencher

15. “Because you deserve dignity, beyond anything else in this world. You deserve a God, and a faith, and a belief that finds you dignified at the core.”

— Hannah Brencher

16. “Agape” is loving a person for exactly who they are – not who we hope they’ll become with enough fixing. It’s this idea that every person has their layers, so you can never confine a person to only what you know about them from the first glance. It’s stacked on the premise that to love anyone is to hope in them always.”

— Hannah Brencher

17. “More than anything, I hope you know that it matters that you’re here.”

— Hannah Brencher

18. “Good-byes hurt. And they happen too much. The only thing I know for certain about this whole good-bye thing? You have to say it sometimes. You have to get real brave, and bite your bottom lip, and let people go sometimes. Fully, fully. Whether you feel ready or not, you’re still going to grow up and use that word a lot more than you ever expected to.”

— Hannah Brencher

19. “Things will fit eventually. Maybe not right away. Maybe not today. But as long as you keep trying things on, and shedding things, you’ll eventually find the right fit.”

— Hannah Brencher

20. “A life well lived is just a collection of small gestures and people you love the best you can and stories we tell back to one another when the moment has passed.”

— Hannah Brencher

21. “Some people are dotted lines and other people are destinations. Some people get you somewhere and some people are just a place to be, all in themselves. But you cannot force those dotted lines into destinations.”

— Hannah Brencher

22. “I think it’s easy to stay angry at a world that never promises you invincibility but still manages to break your heart with the way some moments can make you feel so infinite.”

— Hannah Brencher

23. “And that’s the truth I needed to swallow: people don’t step out and love for you; that’s on you. You have to be the one to get down deep enough and whisper the words people can’t always say for you – whether you believe in them full or not – “I choose you. I choose you.”

— Hannah Brencher

24. “It almost feels like at some point life whacks you on top of the head and hands you a list of all the things you can keep. The list is surprisingly long. You can keep letters. You can keep trying. You can keep secrets and you can try your hardest to keep promises. You can keep your eyes on the road. You can keep his sweatshirt, the one he left on the living room floor. You can keep photos and you can keep the memories. But you cannot keep people. People are not things – you can’t keep them.”

— Hannah Brencher

25. “That’s what I think about people in our lives with plane tickets – you’ve gotta let them go. Let them see what’s out there.”

— Hannah Brencher

26. “Maybe we’re all a how are you away from not feeling so alone in all of this today.”

— Hannah Brencher

27. “The professor taught with the confidence that books change you. They mess up your insides. They make you drool over the prospect of being a better human and a better lover and a better friend. They pull at your stomach and leave you raw and open and naked. Books can straight up mangle you and sometimes it’s just better if you let them do their work.”

— Hannah Brencher

28. “Even though love covers all things, fear is what keeps us silent and keeps words unsaid. Fear keeps us standing in one place. Eventually, when it wins, it means we never got the courage to say what we needed to say.”

— Hannah Brencher

29. “I want to seem put together in front of a person who earns a living trying to help me get all the pieces back together.”

— Hannah Brencher

30. “Like why do we even have to go through meeting people when we know they aren’t going to stay in our lives?”

— Hannah Brencher

31. “I had to take the first step for myself.”

— Hannah Brencher

32. “There is a sprawling beauty that exists inside the relationships where the one who is holding back finally finds the courage to mouth, “I’m all in.”

— Hannah Brencher

33. “Build from the selfless place inside of you that is not big or loud or selfish or proud. Build from that little spot inside of you that burns quietly and unceasingly for others. Remember: whatever is burrowed deep in one hungry soul is bound to be tethered to the hearts of many, many more.”

— Hannah Brencher

34. “Somehow, you’ve found me. I have to believe there’s a reason for that.”

— Hannah Brencher

35. “Remember: whatever is burrowed deep in one hungry soul is bound to be tethered to the hearts of many, many more.”

— Hannah Brencher

36. “I’m just the product of my grandmother telling me for years she would see my name on the spines of books.”

— Hannah Brencher

37. “It’s in those spaces of no control that a brave life actually begins.”

— Hannah Brencher

38. “If joy could break windows and hallelujahs could break floorboards, this church would have been broken down by noon.”

— Hannah Brencher

39. “I could feel God. It was like he was setting fine fingerprints all over the moment. I could feel him in it, as if he were saying to me, “Girl, I’m gonna blow the hinges off anything you think a love letter is, was, or could be. If you would just release the grip, I could turn your whole like into a love letter.”

— Hannah Brencher

40. “It was about some real belief that God wasn’t just going to show up on Sunday and cop out by Tuesday morning.”

— Hannah Brencher

41. “I think something bigger is always happening, but it is never how we narrate it in our own head. It never is. We will meet people we never imagined in places we never planned to go. But it starts with a choice and then follows with a step. Make a choice. Take a step. Make a choice. Take a step. It’s a rhythm of life. You may not get your answer until you make the choice and take the step.”

— Hannah Brencher

42. “I pocketed strangers in my memory, one by one, and tied them closer for... all the ways they looked like me.”

— Hannah Brencher

43. “I feel things too deeply.”

— Hannah Brencher

44. “I believe now that we’re the enemy to the things we really want for our lives. We get really good at telling ourselves ugly lies on repeat.”

— Hannah Brencher

45. “We could build entire cities out of the stories of loneliness.”

— Hannah Brencher

46. “Life hands you a list of things you can keep. People are not things – you can’t keep them.”

— Hannah Brencher

47. “I believe now that we’re the enemy to the things we really want for our lives. We get really good at telling ourselves ugly lies on repeat every day. You’re unworthy. You’re ugly. You’re inadequate.”

— Hannah Brencher

48. “And I was looking for escape routes all the time. Ways to not fully be there, to be distracted by other lives, the lives of people I knew from high school and college that were happening in different states and cities. I would waste hours comparing my life to theirs, sitting the two of them side by side and circling the things that seemed out of place in my own life, like the “What’s Wrong?” pictures in the back of the Highlights magazines. I don’t exactly know what happened that night after.”

— Hannah Brencher

49. “I realize love – building it and making it last – is doing a lot of the things you don’t really feel like doing.”

— Hannah Brencher

50. “Pay more attention to the dotted lines, not just the destinations. The dotted lines are the silent, unspoken victories of this lifetime.”

— Hannah Brencher