Top 500 Kristin Hannah Quotes (2025 Update)
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351. “Let him think she was as safe as one could be. A coward.”

— Kristin Hannah

352. “For most of her life she’d been able to box up bad memories or disappointments and store them deep in the back of her mind, in a place so dark they couldn’t be seen.”

— Kristin Hannah

353. “It would always be a part of her, a scar on her soul, but like all scars, it faded in time from a bright and burning red to a slim, silvery line that could only sometimes be seen.”

— Kristin Hannah

354. “Don’t think about who they are. Think about who you are and what sacrifices.”

— Kristin Hannah

355. “Sometimes holding on was all you could do.”

— Kristin Hannah

356. “She found herself secretly mapping his face, memorizing every ridge and hollow and valley, as if she were an explorer and he her discovery.”

— Kristin Hannah

357. “It’s not intentions that matter. It’s actions. My drill instructor used to say that all the time. We are what we do and say, not what we intend to. I.”

— Kristin Hannah

358. “Goddamn, sometimes it hurt to be free.”

— Kristin Hannah

359. “I think you stand by the people you love.”

— Kristin Hannah

360. “They had been friends in the way that only girls could be – they wore each other’s clothes and slept at each other’s houses and told each other every little secret. They promised to always stay friends.”

— Kristin Hannah

361. “He taught her something new about friendship: it picked right back up where you’d left off, as if you hadn’t been apart at all.”

— Kristin Hannah

362. “She whispered in his ear. “Tell my sister I asked about her. We parted badly.” He smiled. “I am constantly arguing with my brother, even in war. In the end, we’re brothers.”

— Kristin Hannah

363. “She ought to have recognized love’s scarcity early on. If success were gold, lying in rivers, love was a diamond, buried hundreds of feet beneath the surface of the earth and unrecognizable in its natural form.”

— Kristin Hannah

364. “She leaned back against the sliding door and wondered at the vistas she wasn’t seeing. It was all out there – the mystery, the beauty; beyond her ability to see now, but there just the same. It was simply a matter of timing and perspective, what one saw. Like with Mom. Perhaps everything had been there to be seen all along and Meredith had the wrong perspective, or not enough light.”

— Kristin Hannah

365. “The children’s lives would never be the same after today. Their opinions of everything would change, but especially their opinions of themselves, of the durability of love and the truth of their family. They would know forever that their father hadn’t loved their mother – or them – enough to stay with them through hard times.”

— Kristin Hannah

366. “In Paris, with a glass of wine in your hand, you can just be.”

— Kristin Hannah

367. “It was true; always had been. Friendships were like marriages in that way. Routines and patterns were poured early and hardened like cement.”

— Kristin Hannah

368. “They were so... larger than life, these Yanks, with their ready smiles and booming voices. And their gratitude... She’d lost track of the times an American had hugged her so tightly she’d come off her feet.”

— Kristin Hannah

369. “And there it is: the core of everything. We’re sisters. We know each other intimately. Our pasts, our secrets, our fears. It is a precious gift that we tried to throw away but can’t really let go of.”

— Kristin Hannah

370. “Popularity means people think they know you.”

— Kristin Hannah

371. “A wrecked marriage scares everyone. It’s like a rock tossed into a still blue pond; the ripples go on and on.”

— Kristin Hannah

372. “I come from a quieter generation. We understand the value of forgetting, the lure of reinvention.”

— Kristin Hannah

373. “A better mother would shape that anger into loss and then, at least, into the kind of memory of love one can sustain, but Vianne was too empty to be a good mother right now. She could think of no words that weren’t a lie or useless.”

— Kristin Hannah

374. “They’d talked about the past in their bits-and-pieces way. Never all at once, never one big end-up-crying-and-hugging moment, but a constant brushing up of the past, reexamining actions and decisions and beliefs, offering apologies, forgiveness. All of it had brought them closer to who they were, who they’d always been. Mother and daughter. Their essential, immutable bond – fragile enough to snap at a harsh word a long time ago, durable enough to survive death itself. “Mommy! There you are,” MJ.”

— Kristin Hannah

375. “Examination was the only solace. Instead of looking away from heartache, you needed to crawl inside of it, wear it like a warm coat on a cold day. There was peace in loss, beauty in death, freedom in regret.”

— Kristin Hannah

376. “She’d crawled into her grief and cocooned it around her, unable to care about anyone or anything –.”

— Kristin Hannah

377. “I see the incredulity in my son’s eyes and it makes me smile. Our children see us so imperfectly.”

— Kristin Hannah

378. “She wanted to daydream, pretend that her world was upright instead of fallen on its side;.”

— Kristin Hannah

379. “The stairs unfold from the ceiling like a gentleman extending his hand.”

— Kristin Hannah

380. “Rain Valley newcomers pretty much fell into two groups: people running away from something and people running away from everything.”

— Kristin Hannah

381. “Real isn’t how you are made,” said the Skin Horse. “It’s a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real.” “Does it hurt?” asked the Rabbit. “Sometimes,” said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. – The Velveteen Rabbit Margery Williams.”

— Kristin Hannah

382. “She would hold her daughter and stroke her head and let her cry and she would have to be strong. She was so tired of being strong.”

— Kristin Hannah

383. “She could leave them. She could break free and go her own way. It would be frightening, but it couldn’t be worse than staying, watching this toxic dance of theirs, letting their world become her world until there was nothing left of her at all, until she was as small as a comma.”

— Kristin Hannah

384. “Elizabeth laughed. “No way. You’ll have to talk to Dad about this yourself, but I’ll tell you this, honey, it’s dangerous to quit something because you think you’re not good enough. That can be an ugly pattern that repeats itself throughout your life. Believe me, I know.”

— Kristin Hannah

385. “It’s not forgetting that we need Vianne, it’s remembering.”

— Kristin Hannah

386. “Leni was pretty sure that, to her, childhood would always smell like sea air and cigarette smoke and her mother’s rose-scented perfume.”

— Kristin Hannah

387. “That’s why you’re so strong and I’m not.” “You will have to be,” Isabelle said. “For Sophie.” Vianne drew in a breath. And there it was. The reason she couldn’t eat a bowl of arsenic or throw herself in front of a train.”

— Kristin Hannah

388. “And when we let the media choose our heroes for us, we are lost already.”

— Kristin Hannah

389. “The falling apart of a man’s life should make more noise. It should startle passesrby with its Sturm and Drang. It ought to sound like the Parthenon crashing down. Not this ordinary, everyday kind of quiet... He closed his eyes... And still it was quiet, this falling apart of his life, as silent as the last beat of an old man’s heart. A quiet, echoing thud, and then... nothing.”

— Kristin Hannah

390. “Bitterness would do you good. All that smiling and pretending of yours would give me hives.”

— Kristin Hannah

391. “Dreams. They were such precious commodities, and she’d given so many of hers away without a fight. Never again.”

— Kristin Hannah

392. “Did adults just look at the world and see what they wanted to see, think what they wanted to think? Did evidence and experience mean nothing?”

— Kristin Hannah

393. “He saw his whole life in her eyes, all his dreams and hopes and fears.”

— Kristin Hannah

394. “And the books! She’d never seen so many. They whispered to her of unexplored worlds and unmet friends and she realized that she wasn’t alone in this new world. Her friends were here, spine out, waiting for her as they always had.”

— Kristin Hannah

395. “Sometimes we have to forgive the people we love, even if we’re mad as hell. That’s just how it is.”

— Kristin Hannah

396. “In sleep, I dream about the Comfort Lodge and Daniel.”

— Kristin Hannah

397. “Jude remembered this pain. Every woman had felt some version of it: the end of first love. It was when you learned, for good and always, that love could be impermanent.”

— Kristin Hannah

398. “Ever since you were a girl, you’ve been running for what you wanted... Now you’re lost, but you’re still running full speed... How will you ever figure out what you want when everything is a blur?”

— Kristin Hannah

399. “Prayers and faith will not be enough, I’m afraid. The path of righteousness is often dangerous. Get ready, Vianne. This is only your first test. Learn from it.” Mother.”

— Kristin Hannah

400. “Nothing was easier to shatter than the fragile shield of an idealist.”

— Kristin Hannah