Best 18 quotes of Elin Hilderbrand on MyQuotes

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

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

If you love something, set it free. If it was meant to be, it will come back to you. But this, of course, was bullshit. If you loved something and let it go...it would (hello!) find something else to love.

Iowa City is okay as Midwestern cities go, but theres no food, no culture, no ocean.

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.

Also, she doesn't want to hear anyone else's inspiring story about a sister-in-law who went through exactly the same thing and is now running ultramarathons. Celeste doesn't mean to be ungenerous in her thoughts, but she has come to the chilling conclusion that we are all alone in our bodies. Irrefutably, immutably alone. And hence, no one's story offers hope.

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

He liked the atmosphere of skiing - the fire-warmed lodge, the view of a snowy mountainside, the clean air, the drinks - but not the sport itself.

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.

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

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?

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.

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.

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

She had lived in eight different countries growing up and had visited dozens of others. To most people, this sounded cool, and in some ways, Ayers knows, it was cool, or parts of it were. But since humans are inclined to want what they don't have, she longed to live in America, preferably the solid, unchanging, undramatic Midwest, and attend a real high school, the kind shown in movies, complete with a football team, cheerleaders, pep rallies, chemistry labs, summer reading lists, hall passes, proms, detentions, assemblies, fund-raisers, lockers, Spanish clubs, marching bands, and the dismissal bell.

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

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.

You can give birth to a beautiful, perfect human being, but requited love isn’t guaranteed for her—or for any of us.