Top 180 Kristin Harmel Quotes (2026 Update)
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151. “Indeed, Yona has little experience with the way people were supposed to interact with each other. But, she know enough to know that when a man loved a woman, he didn’t do this. Not a good man, anyhow.”

— Kristin Harmel

152. “Maybe the lie wasn’t as wrong if it wasn’t uttered aloud.”

— Kristin Harmel

153. “It’s not about getting it right one hundred percent of the time. It’s about showing up and trying.”

— Kristin Harmel

154. “I knew on some level that he was right, but my anger toward my dad was like a badge of honor, something that united my mom and me. Letting it go would be like losing a piece of who I was.”

— Kristin Harmel

155. “I meant that in a way I’m like Dorothee, aren’t I? I’m on a great adventure and one day I’ll find my way home.”

— Kristin Harmel

156. “But I think you stand to lose far more when your heart is closed,” Chaim said. “That is no life.”

— Kristin Harmel

157. “Please. I learned far too late that life is simply about being good and decent to others. It’s as plain as that. But first, you must be good and decent to yourself. Find.”

— Kristin Harmel

158. “I smile tightly at him. I’m allowed to feel annoyed with my daughter, but he’s not. “She’s just going through a hard time,” I say.”

— Kristin Harmel

159. “Maybe in the end you can’t run from who you are without destroying your life.”

— Kristin Harmel

160. “Distraction wasn’t an impenatrable dam.”

— Kristin Harmel

161. “As long as the stars are above us, I am out there thinking of you.”

— Kristin Harmel

162. “I’m in a place foreign to me, but there’s something about Paris that feels very familiar. I wonder for the first time if a sense of place can be passed down through the blood.”

— Kristin Harmel

163. “The truth is, since the day I met her, it’s all been for her. My whole life. My whole existence. I don’t know how I’ll say good-bye.”

— Kristin Harmel

164. “Maybe I owed it to him – and to myself, in a way – to try harder to understand where he was coming from, but the thought of letting down my walls was terrifying. It was my anger that kept me safe.”

— Kristin Harmel

165. “Remember: the planes cost a bloody fortune. You, on the other hand, are easily replaceable. Act accordingly.”

— Kristin Harmel

166. “Once you discover that you can make magic with a brush, painting becomes like breathing. You can’t live without.”

— Kristin Harmel

167. “It was the war that kept us apart. The world went mad, and your grandfather was no more responsible for the outcome than I was, or than Rose was. We all made our choices. We all had to live with our regrets.”

— Kristin Harmel

168. “Under these stars, fate will guide you home.”

— Kristin Harmel

169. “Because books bring us to another time and place,” the.”

— Kristin Harmel

170. “Yona shook her head. “He sees me as more than I am, I think.” “No. He sees you for exactly who you are. And that is very difficult for him.”

— Kristin Harmel

171. “She hadn’t realized that once one opened the door to one’s heart, it was impossible to fully close it again.”

— Kristin Harmel

172. “Indeed. When it comes to books, the saucier, the better, don’t you think?”

— Kristin Harmel

173. “And to librarians and booksellers everywhere, who ensure that the books with the power to change lives find their way into the hands of the people who need them most.”

— Kristin Harmel

174. “You didn’t think that was just a holiday for them, did you? Surely you don’t expect me to let them simply sit around and play. Their brains would turn to soup.”

— Kristin Harmel

175. “It was a terrible idea to live a life dictated by someone else’s prejudices.”

— Kristin Harmel

176. “You got the library wrong, Eva.”

— Kristin Harmel

177. “Hope, you were born to do this,” he says with his mouth full, and although I know it’s a compliment, the words hit me hard, because I never intended to do this at all. It wasn’t the life I wanted for myself, and Matt knows it. But my grandmother got sick, my mother died, and I no longer had a choice.”

— Kristin Harmel

178. “For when you love, you stand to lose so much.”

— Kristin Harmel

179. “Oh, for goodness’ sake, there’s your rabbit-in-the-headlights look again.” He rolled his eyes, “Now, be a sport and hold my hand, will you? Your solider friend is coming back.”

— Kristin Harmel

180. “The mind plays tricks on us, and sometimes we recast the past in the way we need to see it in order to live with ourselves.”

— Kristin Harmel

181. “Would you have traded the life you’ve had with me for one with evil parents, just because it came with love?” “I don’t know,” Yona said. “You never gave me the chance to choose.”

— Kristin Harmel

182. “She wished she could grab the memories like lifelines and hold on before she went under. But she found them slippery, impossible to grasp.”

— Kristin Harmel

183. “We all suffer losses. But it is how we choose to move ahead that matters, isn’t it? We must honor the past without turning our backs on the future.”

— Kristin Harmel

184. “Ben has never really known me. He knew the pieces I chose to give to him, the body that nursed him, the voice that scolded him, the hands that soothed him. But there is so much more to me, pieces that had nothing to do with my role as his mother, pieces I never let him see.”

— Kristin Harmel

185. “The word choice was strange, but I nodded, because she was right. It was inconvenient to love someone who would never love you the same way, because it held you back in life. It tied you to something you could never have.”

— Kristin Harmel

186. “For when you love, you stand to lose so much. But I think you stand to lose far more when your heart is closed. That is no life.”

— Kristin Harmel

187. “It is the feeling. You have to feel the things you paint in your soul, or they won’t come through to your paintbrush.”

— Kristin Harmel