Kristin Hannah

always thought it was what I wanted: to be loved and admired. Now I think perhaps I’d like to be known.

If I had told him the truth long ago, or had danced and drunk and sung more, maybe he would have seen me instead of a dependable, ordinary mother. He loves a version of me that is incomplete. I always thought it was what I wanted: to be loved and admired. Now I think perhaps I’d like to be known.

If I have learned anything in this long life of mine, it is this: In love we find out who we want to be; in war we find out who we are.

As I approach the end of my years, I know that grief, like regret, settles into our DNA and remains forever a part of us.

It is unnerving, this new unreliability in my vision. Perhaps that’s why I find myself looking backward. The past has a clarity I can no longer see in the present.

He loves a version of me that is incomplete. I always thought it was what I wanted: to be loved and admired. Now I think perhaps I’d like to be known.

“I love you, too,” she said but the words that always seemed so big felt small now. What was love when put up against war?

“Generally, Madame, the failing of a student to learn is the failing of the teacher to teach.”

“I lost both parents though, didn’t I? One died, and the other turned his back on me. I can’t say which hurt more.”

Why was it so easy for men in the world to do as they wanted and so difficult for women?