Elin Hilderbrand Quotes & Sayings

What happened when we died? How were we to know that death wasn't as profound an adventure as life was? — Elin Hilderbrand

Forgiveness is a powerful thing. — Elin Hilderbrand

Fear gripped her like hands around the neck, the way it could only happen in an unfamiliar room in the pitch black of night. — Elin Hilderbrand

She was a born liar, Hope thought. It was incredible. She should skip the modeling career and go straight to politics. "I — Elin Hilderbrand

And here," she said. "Let me fix your tie." She tugged on his bow tie, her eyes appraising him, and he basked in it. He had left his tie crooked on purpose, just so she could straighten it. — Elin Hilderbrand

Being president of the United States is the most stressful, thankless job in the world and Margaret can't fathom why anyone would voluntarily pursue it. — Elin Hilderbrand

A garden is not a matter of life or death. It is far more important than that. — Elin Hilderbrand

Nothing was a natural predator of productive fiction writing like the cell phone. Ditto the laptop. As she had well learned, the laptop could destroy a day. — Elin Hilderbrand

Some people don't like being happy. They're much more comfortable when they have a problem. — Elin Hilderbrand

You know who invented the twist, right?" asked the man next to him. "It was John D. Rockefeller. He was a germophobe, and citrus was a natural disinfectant, so Rockefeller always asked his bartenders to run a lemon peel around the rim of his glass. — Elin Hilderbrand

Hope had been in the NICU for a week before she was named. The name her parents had picked out was Allison - Allegra and Allison, for nauseating twin symmetry - but after all that transpired, they changed their minds and decided to call her Hope, no explanation needed. She was a survivor, an underdog who had prevailed; — Elin Hilderbrand

I will hold your hand and we will walk across this world, and I will sing to you and our babies, and that will be enough for me. — Elin Hilderbrand

He'd learned that when you love someone purely enough, all you wanted was for that person to be happy. (p. 419) — Elin Hilderbrand

First you love the music that your parents love - and then, later in life, you love the songs your kids love. — Elin Hilderbrand

Meredith immersed herself in the novels. For some reason, fiction hit on the meaning of life so much more concisely than real life itself did. — Elin Hilderbrand

She was conscious of being alive and being present: a clear night, a golden beach, good food. — Elin Hilderbrand

She gazes over at baby Genevieve, who is now asleep in Kevin's arms, and thinks, I really don't have any words of advice at all. The world is an endlessly confounding place. — Elin Hilderbrand

breath - the last thing — Elin Hilderbrand

She waved good-bye and hurried down the street towards her family's house, thinking again that some nights had good karma and some nights were cursed, and for a few moments, tonight had seemed like the former, but it had ended up the latter. — Elin Hilderbrand

Love is scary! Taking a vow to love someone through sickness and health, for richer for poorer, forsaking all others, until death do us part, is the most terrifying experience a person can have. Why pretend any differently? — Elin Hilderbrand

It's not a house to us. It's a home. And it's not a home, it's s way of life. Our summertime happens here. This house is part of our past, it's our present, it'll be our future. It's who we are. — Elin Hilderbrand

Women clearly felt things more deeply: they read sub-text where men saw only white space. — Elin Hilderbrand

She could hear the voices and laughter coming from the yard, and she thought, really, this was the best part of any wedding, not the ceremony or the cake or the dancing but the downtime when they were all together without the lights shining on them. — Elin Hilderbrand

She didn't know how any woman anywhere conducted an affair without having the ear of a best friend. — Elin Hilderbrand

To be early is to be on time, to be on time is to be late, to be late is to be forgotten. — Elin Hilderbrand

However, deep down, Brenda suspected that it was the stolen nature of those two hours that transformed them. She was supposed to be somewhere else ... She had set aside those two hours - three, if you counted the driving - to be of service to her sister. The fact that Vicki had unexpectedly granted her leave gave those two hours a rarefied quality. What Brenda had thought was, I'd better not waste them. And, like magic, the words had come. The pages had filled. — Elin Hilderbrand

Summer does something to the brain, " Beth said. "It's intoxicating. Everything shimmers — Elin Hilderbrand

Stuart and Jenna exchanged rings-platinum band for Stuart, and platinum with diamonds for Jenna, but they could have been aluminum or plastic. Expensive rings did not guarantee a happy life together. — Elin Hilderbrand

I am a summer person. — Elin Hilderbrand

Not to mention central air-conditioning, an inn-wide stereo system, plasma TVs and iPod docking stations, and L'Occitane toiletries. — Elin Hilderbrand

She knew she should be happy the girls were outside riding their very expensive horses. Girls who rode became interested in boys and makeup and cigarettes much later than their nonriding counterparts. — Elin Hilderbrand

the mistress of ceremonies, in her — Elin Hilderbrand

Nobody knows where it comes from, and nobody knows where it goes.' Love doesn't make sense most of the time and that's what's so wonderful about it. — Elin Hilderbrand

Even Belinda, who could write what she knew about boats on her thumbnail and still have room for the Lord's Prayer, could tell this one was special. Buck — Elin Hilderbrand

Guilt and no guilt: these were the worst things. The only thing worse than the guilt was the fear of getting caught. — Elin Hilderbrand

With this in mind, Ava tells herself to be present and celebrate the holiday instead of wishing it was over. After all, one is given only a certain number of Christmases in one's life. — Elin Hilderbrand

There are two texts: one from Patrick and one from her mother. Patrick: asdhaosihdkqebrkb. (Butt dial? Or incredibly drunk? Ava doesn't care.) — Elin Hilderbrand

Saying so regardless, for the kids' sake. Was it possible that Arch's spirit resided here, that his soul — Elin Hilderbrand

All her life, Claire had had a problem figuring out where other people ended and she began. All her life, she'd taken on the world's hurt; she held herself responsible. But why? — Elin Hilderbrand

lighter now that it was summer. When he was a little boy, he always told her how pretty she was. Now, — Elin Hilderbrand

Even Meredith's attraction to Freddy had paled when compared to the real love of Meredith's life. The steady, unconditional, fortifying love of Meredith's father was gone forever. — Elin Hilderbrand

William Carlos Williams? "This Is Just to Say" - yes, Dabney had always loved that poem. In the years of Agnes's growing up, a copy of the poem had been taped to the refrigerator door. It was an apology poem - forgive me, they were delicious, so sweet and so cold. Box was holding out the plum and a bottle of chilled Perrier with a silly grin on his face. Celerie — Elin Hilderbrand

Her jump off the George Washington Bridge. Her other attorney, — Elin Hilderbrand

It was like we had known all along that the sky was going to fall and then it fell and we pretended to be surprised. — Elin Hilderbrand

What I think is that every family is happy in their own fashion, and every family is unhappy in their own fashion. Every family is both functional and dysfunctional. — Elin Hilderbrand

The rod felt sleek and expensive in his hand; it was the Maserati of surf-casting rods. — Elin Hilderbrand

And Margot should have made a rule about no cell phones. What was it about life now? The people who weren't present always seemed to be more important than the people who were. — Elin Hilderbrand

Perfect happiness existed, but perhaps only in small increments. — Elin Hilderbrand

Every life contains a novel. — Elin Hilderbrand

In the Chief's ears. He and Phoebe had danced awfully close to the band's brass section. "Okay, I have to go in to work. Please don't wake your mother. Will you be around when the twins get home?" "Um," Kacy said. "I guess?" April Peck, the Chief thought. Sweet Jesus. "I have to go," he said. He was unwashed, unshaven, in his street clothes, and he had to make do with the truly atrocious coffee that Molly made for the station. These were all bad omens. And somehow he had to make room in his mind for Phoebe's — Elin Hilderbrand

Iowa City is okay as Midwestern cities go, but there's no food, no culture, no ocean. — Elin Hilderbrand

She had thought that 'depression' would be like sitting in a rocking chair and not being able to make it move. She had thought it would descend over her like a fog, turning things fuzzy, coloring them gray. But depression was active, it paced back and forth wringing its hands. She couldn't stop thinking; she couldn't find her way free from apprehension. — Elin Hilderbrand

Nick was chocolate and cigarettes and whiskey and danger, and everything I should stay away from. — Elin Hilderbrand

They always stayed at the beach to enjoy the golden hour, that hour when the sun sank low enough to spangle the water and make everything look as if it had been dipped in honey. — Elin Hilderbrand

Of the things I want my daughters to know the greatest of these is love. — Elin Hilderbrand

And that's the thing about marriage. It can look perfect to people from the outside but be utterly imperfect on the inside. The reverse is true as well. No one knows what goes on in a marriage except for the two people living in it. — Elin Hilderbrand

This exquisite, tremendous, and endlessly confounding life — Elin Hilderbrand

I want an ending when the woman is happy instead of good. — Elin Hilderbrand

Agnes like she was a baby bird. Dabney felt a combination of — Elin Hilderbrand

Sometimes you regret the things you do, but they're over and done. Regretting the things you didn't do is tougher because they're still out there, haunting you with the what ifs. — Elin Hilderbrand

One is never too young for fine literature . . . — Elin Hilderbrand

in the sweltering attic, and — Elin Hilderbrand

For graduate school I ended up going to the University of Iowa, which is, of course, the best graduate writing program in the country. — Elin Hilderbrand

I want my money back! — Elin Hilderbrand

When you're in love, every day is like a present you get to open. — Elin Hilderbrand

collaborating with Grace. It was more — Elin Hilderbrand

The body of water between Martha's Vineyard and Nantucket is the Muskeget Channel. "I — Elin Hilderbrand

If everyone slept with the person he or she had secretly fallen in love with, the world would be chaos. — Elin Hilderbrand

When you peered into the windows of someone else's life, you could only guess what was going on. — Elin Hilderbrand

He has never known a woman so free from conceit, vanity, ambition, pretense. He has never known a woman so willing to show the world that she is a human being. — Elin Hilderbrand

The shoes had come to define him as he proceeded to break every sprinting record at New Bedford High School and other high schools across the Commonwealth, earning himself the nickname Fast Eddie. — Elin Hilderbrand