Winter Garden Quotes

“We women make choices for others, not for ourselves, and when we are mothers, we...bear what we must for our children. You will protect them. It will hurt you; it will hurt them. Your job is to hide that your heart is breaking and do what they need you to do.”
― Kristin Hannah, Winter Garden

“To lose love is a terrible thing. But to turn away from it is unbearable. Will you spend the rest of your life replaying it in your head? Wondering if you walked away too soon or too easily? Or if you'll ever love anyone that deeply again?”
― Kristin Hannah, Winter Garden

“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.”
― Kristin Hannah, Winter Garden

“And maybe that was how it was supposed to be...Joy and sadness were part of the package; the trick, perhaps,was to let yourself feel all of it, but to hold on to the joy just a little more tightly...”
― Kristin Hannah, Winter Garden

“To those who are here, those who are gone, and those who are lost.”
― Kristin Hannah, Winter Garden

“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, Winter Garden

“Nina stared at the woman who had raised her and saw the truth at last.
Her mother was a lioness. A warrior. A woman who’d chosen a life of hell for herself because she wanted to give up and didn’t know how.
And with that small understanding came another, bigger one. Nina suddenly saw her own life in focus. All these years, she’d been traveling the world over, looking for her own truth in other woman’s lives.
But it was here all along, at home with the one woman she’s never even tried to understand. No wonder Nina had never felt finished, never wanted to publish her photographs of the woman. Her quest had always been leading up to this moment, this understanding. She’s been hiding behind the camera, looking through the glass, trying to find herself. But how could she? How could any woman know her own story until she knew her mother’s? ”
― Kristin Hannah, Winter Garden

“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.”
― Kristin Hannah, Winter Garden

“Nina knew the power of black and white images. Sometimes a thing was its truest self when the colors were stripped away.”
― Kristin Hannah, Winter Garden

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

“Young has nothing to do with love. A woman can be a girl and still know her own heart.”
― Kristin Hannah, Winter Garden

“I think maybe love can just...dissolve."
"No, it does not," her mother said.
"So how do--"
"You hang on," her mother said. "Until your hands are bleeding, and still you do not let go.”
― Kristin Hannah, Winter Garden

“I would not love him again. Not if I had known how it would feel to live with a broken heart.”
― Kristin Hannah, Winter Garden

“life—and love—can be gone any second. When you had it, you needed to hang on with all your strength and savor every second.”
― Kristin Hannah, Winter Garden

“what shall we drink to?"
"How about family?" Stacy said, showing up just in time to pour a fourth shot. "To those who are here, those who are gone, and those who are lost." and she clicked glasses with mom”
― Kristin Hannah, Winter Garden

“He has been in her heart for so long it is as if she knows him already, but she doesn't. She does not know what to say or how to say it, and suddenly she is afraid that there is a wrong way to move forward, a mistake that once made cannot be undone.”
― Kristin Hannah, Winter Garden

“To be a great photographer you had to see first and feel later.”
― Kristin Hannah, Winter Garden

“How could any woman know her own story until she knew her mother’s?”
― Kristin Hannah, Winter Garden

“And maybe that was how it was supposed to be, how life unfolded when you lived it long enough. Joy and sadness were part of the package; the trick, perhaps, was to let yourself feel all of it, but to hold on to the joy just a little more tightly because you never knew when a strong heart could just give out.”
― Kristin Hannah, Winter Garden

“The only real thing in this icy blue-and-black world is my daughter’s hand in mine.”
― Kristin Hannah, Winter Garden

“Every choice changed the road you were on and it was too easy to end up going in the wrong direction. Sometimes, settling down”
― Kristin Hannah, Winter Garden

“Children become adults who become children again.”
― Kristin Hannah, Winter Garden

“But I was wrong and stupid. I do love you. I love you and I miss you and I hope to hell I’m not too late because I want to grow old with the man I was young with.”
― Kristin Hannah, Winter Garden

“I should have called Dad more from Africa,” Nina said. “I knew how much my phone calls meant to him. I always thought there was time. . . .” “Sometimes the door just slams shut, you know? And you’re all by yourself.”
― Kristin Hannah, Winter Garden

“Grief had become her silent sidekick. She felt its shadow beside her all the time.”
― Kristin Hannah, Winter Garden

“I stand up feeling my new role. I am a motherless daughter now, a sisterless woman. There is no one left of the family I was born into; there is only the family I have made. My mother is in all of us, though especially in me, and the dreams of my father to, so it is my job to be all of us now.”
― Kristin Hannah, Winter Garden

“She’d lost too much of herself in parenthood to simply go back to who she’d been before.”
― Kristin Hannah, Winter Garden

“Her father was dying. Nothing could change that. Words were like pennies, fallen into corners and down the cracks, not worth the effort of collecting.”
― Kristin Hannah, Winter Garden

“It was ridiculous. She knew crying wouldn’t help, because she cried in her sleep. Night after night she woke with tears on her cheeks, and none of it helped one bit. In fact, the opposite was true. The expression of grief didn’t help. Only its suppression would get her through these hard times.”
― Kristin Hannah, Winter Garden

“We women make choices for others, not for ourselves, and when we are mothers, we . . . bear what we must for our children. You will protect them. It will hurt you; it will hurt them. Your job is to hide that your heart is breaking and do what they need you to do.”
― Kristin Hannah, Winter Garden