Kristin Hannah

“She used to tell me that she couldn't feel the sunlight anymore, not even when she was standing in it, not even when it was hot on her cheeks”

“For years he'd strived to make a difference in the world, and he'd worked like a dog to make that happen, and yet here he was, a man sitting on a dock with his children, and never had he felt more certain that his words mattered.”

“It's not intentions that matter. It's actions. We are what we do and say, not what we intend to.”

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

“Lately he'd been seen going out less and less, becoming that strangest of animals in a small town: a loner.”

“Thoughts - even fears - were airy things, formless until you made them solid with your voice and once given that weight, they could crush you.”

“I’m an insomniac lately. It’s one of the many prizes you find in the Cracker Jack box of a crumbling [relationship],”

“That was the thing about best friends. Like sisters and mothers, they could piss you off and make you cry and break your heart, but in the end, when the chips were down, they were there, making you laugh even in your darkest hours. ”

“Sometimes being a good friend means saying nothing.”

“The quarterback? Wow. My mom wouldn't let me stand in the same checkout line as a high school senior. She's so lame.She's not lame.She thinks eighteen year old boys are dangerous. She calls them penises with hands and feet. Tell me that isn't lame.”

“A daughter without her mother is a woman broken. It is a loss that turns to arthritis and settles deep into her bones. ”

“As mothers and daughters, we are connected with one another. My mother is the bones of my spine, keeping me straight and true. She is my blood, making sure it runs rich and strong. She is the beating of my heart. I cannot now imagine a life without her.”

“Books + friendship = book club”

“That was what a best friend did: hold up a mirror and show you your heart.”

“If she wasn't careful, she'd slide without a ripple into the gently flowing stream of her old life, pulled back under the current without a wimper of protest. Another housewife lost in the flow.”

“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.”

“She was touching his body with her tongue, and he felt it there, but somehow what she was doing went deeper. As if that gentle, moist tongue of hers were flicking his heart as well.”

“One of the drawbacks of sleeping with whores, he thought lazily. You got what you paid for, and not a goddamn thing more.”

“And no one drank just one shot of tequila.”

“He liked whores. He always had.”

“She was so unlike the other women he'd slept with. Course, they were whores, mostly...”

“Walk. Run. Ride.”

“For the first time in his life, he was going to be a goddamn hero.”

“Holy shit, she was serious.”

“He's made a mistake in coming here tonight. He'd wanted to see a room filled with ruffly knickknacks and lacy gewgaws. A room like any other, to indicate that she was a woman like any other.”

“Goddamn, sometimes it hurt to be free.”

“They would always be a family, but if she'd learned anything in the past few weeks it was that a family wasn't a static thing. There were always changes going on. Like with continents, sometimes the changes were invisible and underground, and sometimes they were explosive and deadly. The trick was to keep your balance. 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.”

“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.”

“And before you barrel through some idiotic Cosmo girl list of how-well-do-you-know-your-man questions, let me say that I don't know squat about him except that he kisses like a god and screws like a devil.”

“I guess no one stays friends for more than thirty years without broken hearts along the way.”

“What good did it do to light the world on fire if she had to watch the glow alone?”

“Popularity means people think they know you.”

“One thing I can tell you for sure is this: we only regret what we don't do in life.”

“You couldn't give up you for them. But what if you wanted them more than you wanted a singular powerful you?”

“Do you love him?"How would I know?"You'd know.”

“How did you tell a man that you'd grown up, that you'd learned true love wasn't a night of passionate sex under a sky lit up by fireworks, but an ordinary Sunday morning when your husband brought you a glass of water, two aspirins, and a heating pad for your cramps?”

“At one point, she'd wanted to hurl the whole breakfast at the wall. And then she'd remember why it was that men had temper tantrums and women didn't: cleanup.”

“She still felt shell-shocked by all of it, numb. Beneath the numbness, though, was a raw and terrible anger that was unlike anything she'd felt before. She had so little experience with genuine anger that it scared her. She actually worried that if she started screaming, she'd never stop.”

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

“The at-home mother's life: it was a race with no finish line.”