Top 500 Kristin Hannah Quotes (2025 Update)
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201. “Leni was afraid to stay and afraid to leave. It was strange – stupid, even – but she often felt like the only adult in her family, as if she were the ballast that kept the creaky Allbright boat on an even keel.”

— Kristin Hannah

202. “It was a gray, not-quite-rainy day, the kind where the sky was so low it seemed to bump you in the forehead when you dared to venture outside.”

— Kristin Hannah

203. “Memories- even the best of them- faded.”

— Kristin Hannah

204. “Sometimes you have to do everything right and follow the rules. You have to wait until all your ducks are in a row before you make a move. And other times... like now... you have to say ‘what the hell’ and go for it.”

— Kristin Hannah

205. “I am like some wounded animal in a darkened lair, nursing the thorn in my paw, unable to find anyone to take it out.”

— Kristin Hannah

206. “Missing him. Longing for him. Worrying about him. Those were her nighttime journeys.”

— Kristin Hannah

207. “You can’t unlove someone even if you want to, even if he breaks your heart.”

— Kristin Hannah

208. “Alice started to cry. It came with no sound, no shuddering, no childlike hysterics, just a soul-deep release that turned into moisture and dripped down her puffy pink cheeks. She touched her tears, frowning. Then she looked up at Julia and whimpered two words before she fell asleep. ‘Real hurts.’”

— Kristin Hannah

209. “In the years that she had been tying scraps to the branches, the tree had died and the fruit had turned bitter. The other apple trees were hale and healthy, but this one, the tree of her remembrances, was as black and twisted as the bombed-out town behind it.”

— Kristin Hannah

210. “I love you. I’m proud of you. I’ve never seen anyone so brave. Why was I so mean for so long? You gave me wings, Mom. Did you know that? I feel you here. Will I always?”

— Kristin Hannah

211. “This is how my love for her goes on: in moments remembered and moments imagined. It’s how I keep her alive. Hers is the voice in my head, my conscience. I see the world, at least in part, through her eyes. Her story – which is the story of a time and land and the indomitable will of a people – is my story; two lives woven together, and like any good story, ours will begin and end and begin again. Love is what remains.”

— Kristin Hannah

212. “Alaska didn’t create character; it revealed it.”

— Kristin Hannah

213. “Hope. A shiny thing, a lure for the unwary. She knew how seductive it could be, and how dangerous.”

— Kristin Hannah

214. “I had forgotten how gently time passes in Paris. As lively as the city is, there’s a stillness to it, a peace that lures you in. In Paris, with a glass of wine in your hand, you can just be.”

— Kristin Hannah

215. “I think maybe ‘in love’ has the shelf life of whipping cream. No matter how you handle it, it goes sour. But if you’re lucky, you get past ‘in love’ and end up just loving someone.”

— Kristin Hannah

216. “In the silence, Leni wondered if one person could ever really save another, or if it was the kind of thing you had to do for yourself.”

— Kristin Hannah

217. “If I’m finally taking a trip into the unknown; there ought to be photographs to document this momentous event.”

— Kristin Hannah

218. “The things your parents say and the things your husband doesn’t say become a mirror, don’t they? You see yourself as they see you, and no matter how far you come, you bring that mirror with you.”

— Kristin Hannah

219. “I love you,” he said against her lips. “I love you, too,” she said but the words that always seemed so big felt small now. What was love when put up against war?”

— Kristin Hannah

220. “A watering system had kept everything alive; plants, like people, learned to grow in rocky terrain.”

— Kristin Hannah

221. “Leni saw suddenly how hope could break you, how it was a shiny lure for the unwary. What happened to you if you hoped too hard for the best and got the worst? Was it better not to hope at all, to prepare? Wasn’t that what her father’s lesson always was? Prepare for the worst.”

— Kristin Hannah

222. “Alaska brings out the best and the worst in a man. Maybe if you’d stayed Outside you never would have become who you are now. I know about ‘Nam, and it breaks my heart what you boys went through. But you can’t handle the dark, can you? It’s nothing to be ashamed of. Most folks can’t. Accept it and do what’s best for your family.”

— Kristin Hannah

223. “I was not good at the whole making-death-a-positive-transition thing. How could I? I wanted her to fight to the last breath. It was a mistake. I should have listened to her fear, comforted her. Instead I’d promised her that everything would be okay, that she would heal.”

— Kristin Hannah

224. “I have spent a lifetime running from it, trying to forget, but now I see what a waste all that was. Antoine was Julien’s father in every way that mattered. It is not biology that determines fatherhood. It is love.”

— Kristin Hannah

225. “Love is such a slippery thing.”

— Kristin Hannah

226. “Of course you can fall in love. You just have to let yourself. They don’t call it falling for nothing. -Kate.”

— Kristin Hannah

227. “It was ridiculous. She knew crying wouldn’t help, because she cried in her sleep. Night after night she woke with tears on her cheeks, and none of it helped one bit. In fact, the opposite was true. The expression of grief didn’t help. Only its suppression would get her through these hard times.”

— Kristin Hannah

228. “Mama gave a tired laugh. Leni understood. You could be as careful as a chemist with nitroglycerin around dad. It wouldn’t change a thing. Sooner or later, he was going to blow.”

— Kristin Hannah

229. “She needed Matthew, but not to save her or complete her or reinvent her. Her love for him was the clearest, cleanest, strongest emotion she’d ever felt. It was like opening your eyes or growing up, realizing that you had it in you to love like this. Forever. For all time. Or for all the time you had.”

— Kristin Hannah

230. “She is like a child picking at a scab, unable to stop herself even though she knows it will hurt.”

— Kristin Hannah

231. “Love shows us who we want to be. War shows us who we are.”

— Kristin Hannah

232. “It was one of those moments – an instant of grace in a crazy, sometimes impossibly dangerous world – that changed a man’s life.”

— Kristin Hannah

233. “It isn’t about being at the same school or the same town or even the same room. It’s about being together. Love is a choice you make.”

— Kristin Hannah

234. “Before this trip and all that she’d learned about the three of them, she would have gotten angry or changed the subject. Anything to obscure the pain she felt. Now she knew better. You carried your pain with you in life. There was no outrunning it.”

— Kristin Hannah

235. “For the first time, her romantic novels made sense; she realized that the landscape of a woman’s soul could change as quickly as a world at war.”

— Kristin Hannah

236. “Their kiss was sad, an apology almost, a reminder of what they’d once shared.”

— Kristin Hannah

237. “Coffee?” Isabelle finger-combed her hair and tied a cotton scarf around her head. “No, merci, it is too precious.” The old woman gave her a smile. “No one suspects a woman my age of anything. It makes me good at trading. Here.” She offered Isabelle a cracked porcelain mug full of steaming black coffee. Real coffee. Isabelle wrapped her hands around the mug and breathed deeply of the familiar, never-again-to-be-taken-for-granted aroma. Madame.”

— Kristin Hannah

238. “That was the one thing she knew now. Some chances came and went, and if you missed them, you could spend the rest of your life standing alone, waiting for an opportunity that had already passed you by.”

— Kristin Hannah

239. “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.”

— Kristin Hannah

240. “I can be a little OCD when it comes to my writing.”

— Kristin Hannah

241. “Teach the boys how to be gentlemen and Marah how to be strong.”

— Kristin Hannah

242. “He started to cry, and she pulled him into her arms. It took perhaps the greatest courage of her life to let go of him.”

— Kristin Hannah

243. “When you’re a mom, you learn about fear. You’re always afraid. Always. About everything from cupboard doors to kidnappers to weather.”

— Kristin Hannah

244. “Leni stared down at the sea, rolling inexorably toward her. Nothing you did could hold back that rising tide. One mistake or miscalculation and you could be stranded or washed away. All you could do was protect yourself by reading the charts and being prepared and making smart choices.”

— Kristin Hannah

245. “Some lives are not ours to hold on to; God makes His choices without us.”

— Kristin Hannah

246. “Your mama told me that if a girl grows up smelling sea air, she can never really breathe inland.”

— Kristin Hannah

247. “She is angry. And angry people make mistakes in war and die.”

— Kristin Hannah

248. “Like all motherless girls, Leni would become an emotional explorer, trying to uncover the lost part of her, the mother who carried and nurtured and loved her. Leni would become both mother and child; to her, mama would still grow and age. She would never be gone, not as long as Leni remembered her.”

— Kristin Hannah

249. “A searing, cleansing, enveloping love blew her heart into a million tiny pieces and reshaped it.”

— Kristin Hannah

250. “You couldn’t control the direction of your family any more than you could stop the continental shelf from breaking apart. All you could do was hold on for the ride.”

— Kristin Hannah