25 Quotes by Kelly Quindlen

Hannah looks through the windshield and begs the sky that her life will always be like this – large and loud and brimming with youth, but always followed by the quiet drive home and the promise of ending the night with her favorite person in the world.

I remember feeling like I was both too much and not enough.

We have to take ownership for our words. Words are powerful. They can be devastating. If your words carry hate – if they shame others, if they make them doubt that they are loved – Hannah, you don’t want to own words like that.

We weren’t made to be alone. We were made to love. And when we love, we automatically know God without trying to, because God is love. If we love as he made us to love – if we love with our hearts instead of our criteria – then we simply are love.

She sets a hand on the cold sand and pushes herself forward until her lips meet Baker’s with the delicate touch of tree leaves. And there on the beach, with the sand, the sky, and the water as their witnesses, Baker kisses her back, and Hannah hopes desperately that the crashing of the waves is a celebration rather than a condemnation.

She sees herself, and she does not look away.

They ride over pebbles and patches of dusk-colored sunlight, underneath the spread arms of the live oaks and the promise of their green leaves, past houses full of people and rules and prayers and magic. Hannah looks at Baker, and Baker extends her hand outward into the space between them, holding it palm-up for Hannah to take, right there in the heart of the garden.

Hannah stomps, buries, suffocates, wishes for death. “Yeah,” she says. “I’m good.

I can tell you that I believe – that the human heart’s mysterious ability to love others is never wrong. Your heart will never ask your permission to love. It’s going to love whomever it was made to love, and the best thing you can do is follow it.