The Five-Star Weekend Quotes

“You can be more than one kind of person in your life,” he says.”
― Elin Hilderbrand, The Five-Star Weekend

“There was the golden age, the years our children were nine, ten, eleven. Fourth and fifth grade....of course you never realize it's the golden age until it's over.”
― Elin Hilderbrand, The Five-Star Weekend

“She hangs up just as a text from Sofia comes in. Are you on the phone with Isaac? A chill rolls up Caroline’s spine. The loneliest place in the world, she realizes, is between two other people.”
― Elin Hilderbrand, The Five-Star Weekend

“The thing I love best about reading fiction is that it gives you a way to connect the experiences of your own life to the larger world.”
― Elin Hilderbrand, The Five-Star Weekend

“cilantro-and-lime-marinated swordfish with avocado sauce, a summer squash tart with goat cheese and mint, a large green salad, and homemade baguettes with black pepper butter that, yes, her mother churned herself like a pioneer woman. This will be followed by peach cobbler with a hot sugar crust topped with fresh whipped cream, and tiny squares of Japanese chocolate.”
― Elin Hilderbrand, The Five-Star Weekend

“The loneliest place in the world, she realizes, is between two other people.”
― Elin Hilderbrand, The Five-Star Weekend

“(Motherhood, she has come to realize, requires a lot of math: How much space is enough; how much is too much?)”
― Elin Hilderbrand, The Five-Star Weekend

“Jack chuckles. “You can be more than one kind of person in your life,” he says. “But I’ve always been a person who loves Hollis Shaw.”
― Elin Hilderbrand, The Five-Star Weekend

“Hollis was raised by Tom Shaw; she can start a fire with a pile of dry leaves and a dirty look.”
― Elin Hilderbrand, The Five-Star Weekend

“She weighs the decision for a moment, then butters the baguette and pops it in her mouth. It's so delicious that she doesn't care if they have to roll her off the island in a wheelbarrow.”
― Elin Hilderbrand, The Five-Star Weekend

“I wanted to be surrounded by the people who knew me best, Moira wrote, even though a couple of the women I hadn’t seen or talked to in years. Even though our common ground had shrunk. Even though these women didn’t know one another well—or at all. I wanted to celebrate the friendships that had made me who I was.”
― Elin Hilderbrand, The Five-Star Weekend

“When someone was engaging with the website, a pinprick of light appeared on the map so that visitors to the site could imagine another cook in, say, Spokane, Washington, or Grand Island, Nebraska, standing in her or his kitchen mincing chives and parsley for Hollis’s tortellini salad.”
― Elin Hilderbrand, The Five-Star Weekend

“My wife doesn’t need to be part of this cougar committee,” he says to Hollis. “You’re all… Wiccans!”
― Elin Hilderbrand, The Five-Star Weekend

“I want to go back, she thinks. Back to the days of sleepovers and fancy birthday breakfasts.”
― Elin Hilderbrand, The Five-Star Weekend

“this weekend she’s determined not to be a bother or require special attention. She won’t talk too much or apologize for things that aren’t her fault, and she won’t get on anyone’s nerves.”
― Elin Hilderbrand, The Five-Star Weekend

“In her senior year of high school, Hollis wrote what her English teacher Ms. Fox called “the best college essay I’ve read in thirty-one years.” It took the form of a letter to Hollis’s deceased mother, Charlotte. Dear Mom, it started, I think you would be proud of the way I turned out. Here are some of the reasons why. It”
― Elin Hilderbrand, The Five-Star Weekend

“Practice” by DaBaby,”
― Elin Hilderbrand, The Five-Star Weekend

“Hollis was her every day. Hollis was her unconditional. How had Hollis known how to be a mom? Thinking about it now, Caroline finds it sort of amazing.”
― Elin Hilderbrand, The Five-Star Weekend

“after they’ve”
― Elin Hilderbrand, The Five-Star Weekend

“but now she exudes self-possession. It’s as though she took a Brené Brown seminar in her sleep.”
― Elin Hilderbrand, The Five-Star Weekend

“attract Hollis’s attention when she’s one of millions? Well, she has inside information. Matthew tells her that Hollis lost her mother when she was a baby—and as it happens, Gigi’s mother died when she was only twelve. Gigi gets on the Corkboard and messages Hollis that she’s grateful for the cooking demos because my own mum passed away before she could teach me her favorite Cantonese”
― Elin Hilderbrand, The Five-Star Weekend

“well. They find Brooke—okay, wow—in the center of a circle of Chads. (Dru-Ann can’t remember what a group of Chads is called. It’s either a privilege or an inheritance.) These boys are wearing white pants, pastel polos, belts needlepointed for them by their rich, idle mothers, and loafers without socks. They’re sloshing their vodka sodas around, cheering on their new mascot, Brooke.”
― Elin Hilderbrand, The Five-Star Weekend

“is a cold cap? Tatum imagines an old lady’s bathing cap made of ice. Does it put you in a prolonged state of brain freeze? Stage 3 has to do with the size of the tumor, and stage 4 is metastatic breast cancer, which means the cancer has spread to other parts of the body, such as the brain or the liver. Stage 4 can still be treated but the cancer will get you eventually unless you get hit by a bus or drown in a riptide first.”
― Elin Hilderbrand, The Five-Star Weekend

“a noninvasive tumor. Stage 1—before the cancer spreads to the lymph nodes—is curable, though lots of stage 1 patients have mastectomies. Triple positive is good—this means the tumors respond to hormones—though triple-positive patients often go on a drug called tamoxifen, and everyone hates it because it makes you gain weight and zaps your sex drive. In stage 2, the cancer has spread to the lymph nodes; they sometimes feel swollen. Tatum checks under her arms again; she thought she felt some swelling the other night, but tonight, nothing. HER2-positive breast cancer is aggressive—treatment is effective but it nearly always includes chemotherapy. You can order a “cold cap” so your hair won’t fall out, but it’s expensive. What even”
― Elin Hilderbrand, The Five-Star Weekend

“Tatum sits on her bed in a towel. She spends fifteen minutes on WebMD and other websites that offer “expert medical knowledge” studying the survival rates for breast cancer. Stage 0 means you have”
― Elin Hilderbrand, The Five-Star Weekend

“She has always had excellent eyebrows, but as fifty-three years have taught her, good eyebrows don’t guarantee one a smooth journey through life.”
― Elin Hilderbrand, The Five-Star Weekend

“now that her father is dead, it isn’t funny. Caroline is furious with her mother for reasons she can’t articulate, and the stark truth is that Caroline is still in so much emotional pain that holding a grudge feels good.”
― Elin Hilderbrand, The Five-Star Weekend

“Look for a chink in the armor, he said, where you can penetrate the surface and discover a hidden truth.”
― Elin Hilderbrand, The Five-Star Weekend

“She will slay the girls’ weekend. She will be the MVP.”
― Elin Hilderbrand, The Five-Star Weekend

“You can be more than one kind of person in your life,” he says. “But I’ve always been a person who loves Hollis Shaw.”
― Elin Hilderbrand, The Five-Star Weekend