Kristin Hannah: Maybe time didn't heal wounds exactly, but it gave you...

When you get . . . to the end, you see that love and family are all there is. Nothing else matters.

Kristin Hannah

love-and-family ends matter

Caro: "Bite me." Ruby: "I gave that up in kindergarten.

Kristin Hannah

kindergarten bite-me rubies

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

Kristin Hannah

shields easier idealist

You look great," he said. It made her smile, even if it was a lie. "I'm as big as a house." He laughed. "I like houses. In fact, I'm thinking about architecture as a career.

Kristin Hannah

careers lying thinking

Stacey: "I'm surprised you haven't thrown me out." Comfort: "At your current weight, I'd need some sort of catapult.

Kristin Hannah

weight comfort needs

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

real hurt two

The heat made people crazy. They woke from their damp bedsheets and went in search of a glass of water, surprised to find that when their vision cleared, they were holding instead the gun they kept hidden in the bookcase.

Kristin Hannah

glasses crazy gun

Real friends. The kind that don't purposely hurt your feelings or stop liking you for no reason.

Kristin Hannah

real hurt feelings

Promises were a lot like impressions. The second one didn't count for much.

Kristin Hannah

impression promise

He was afraid that the secrets she'd kept would always be here, inside him, an ugly malignant thing lodged near enough to his heart to upset its rhythm, and though it could be removed, cut out, there would always be scars; bits and pieces of it would remain in his blood, making it wrong somehow, so that if he accidentally sliced his skin open, his blood would--for one heartbeat--flow as black as India ink before it remembered that it should be red.

Kristin Hannah

cutting heart blood

Liam learned that it was possible to appear to move forward when you were really standing still.

Kristin Hannah

standing-still liam moving

Nina knew the power of black and white images. Sometimes a thing was its truest self when the colors were stripped away.

Kristin Hannah

black-and-white color self

We can't live other people's lives for them. Even if we love them.

Kristin Hannah

ifs people

...This fear was unbearable. It unwrapped who she was, as neatly as he'd unwound her bandage, leaving too much pain and ugliness exposed. Nerve endings; he'd said they were the problem [causing phantom pain in the amputated limb]." Things that cut off, that ended abruptly or died--like parents and marriages--kept hurting forever.

Kristin Hannah

cutting pain hurt

I didn't know how...deep love ran, how it was in your blood, not your heart, and how that same blood pumped through your veins your whole life.

Kristin Hannah

deep-love heart blood

It was the Magic Hour, the moment in time when every leaf and blade of grass seemed to separate, when sunlight, burnished by the rain and softened by the coming night, gave the world an impossibly beautiful glow.

Kristin Hannah

rain beautiful night

She'd been criticized for holding the reins of parenthood too tightly, of controlling her children too completely, but she didn't know how to let go. From the moment she'd first decided to become a mother, it had been an epic battle.

Kristin Hannah

mother letting-go children

It is a kiss that, once begun, never really ends. Interrupted, yes. Paused, certainly. But from that very moment onward, Vera sees the whole of her life as only a breath away from kissing him again. On that night in the park, they begin the delicate task of binding their souls together, creating a whole comprising their separate halves.

Kristin Hannah

creating kissing night

It’s a promise ring,” he said solemnly. “The lady at the store said it’s what you give the girl you love. It means I want to marry you someday.

Kristin Hannah

girl giving mean

but sometimes one person can hold you up in life, keep you standing, and without that hand to hold, you can find yourself free-falling no matter how strong you used to be, no matter how hard you try to remain steady.

Kristin Hannah

strong hands fall

Maybe time didn't heal wounds exactly, but it gave you a kind of armor, or a new perspective. A way to remember with a smile instead of a sob.