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A Romance Novel Focuses Exclusively On Two People Falling In Love. It Can't Be About A Woman Caring For Her Aging Mother Or Something Like That. It Can Have That Element, But It Has To Be Primarily About The Male-female Relationship.

-Kristin Hannah

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A Romance Novel Focuses

Kristin Hannah

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A Romance Novel Focuses Exclusively On Two People Falling In Love. It Can't Be About A Woman Caring For Her Aging Mother Or Something Like That. It Can Have That Element, But It Has To Be Primarily About The Male-female Relationship.

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Falling In Love

More From Kristin Hannah

Nothing Was Easier To Shatter Than The Fragile Shield Of An Idealist.

Honestly, When You Start Talking About Genres, You're Talking As Much About The Business Side Of Writing As Anything Else. Certainly There Are Elements Of Reader Expectation That Play Into Various Genres, And Those Are Important, But It Also Becomes About Packaging, Placement, Audience....in The End, I'm Not A Fan Of Labels. I Think The Best Fiction Blurs The Boundaries Between Genres, Stretches And Breaks Them.

From The First Time We Met, We Knew Everything That Mattered About Each Other, Didn't We? We Just Knew. I Guess That's What Best Friends Are: Parts Of Each Other.

When You're A Mom, You Learn About Fear. You're Always Afraid. Always. About Everything From Cupboard Doors To Kidnappers To Weather.

That Was The Thing About Best Friends. Like Sisters And Mothers, They Could Piss You Off And Make You Cry And Break Your Heart, But In The End, When The Chips Were Down, They Were There, Making You Laugh Even In Your Darkest Hours.

What Good Did It Do To Light The World On Fire If She Had To Watch The Glow Alone?

You Will Always Miss Her. There Will Be Days - Even Years From Now - When The Missing Will Be So Sharp It Will Take Your Breath Away. But There Will Be Good Days, Too, Months And Years Of Them. In One Way Or Another You'll Be Searching For Her All Your Life.

To Make Real Friends You Have To Put Yourself Out There. Sometimes People Will Let You Down, But You Can't Let That Stop You. If You Get Hurt, You Just Pick Yourself Up, Dust Off Your Feelings, And Try Again.

She Waited For You In A Thousand Different Ways.

I Prefer To Scare Myself In The Ordinary Ways, Daddy. Like Letting My Children Cross The Country For College. Why Bungee Jump When You Can Put A Kindergartener On A School Bus? Now, That's Real Terror.

Of Course You Can Fall In Love. You Just Have To Let Yourself. They Don't Call It Falling For Nothing. -kate

Falling In Love

Real Friends. The Kind That Don't Purposely Hurt Your Feelings Or Stop Liking You For No Reason.

That Was What A Best Friend Did: Hold Up A Mirror And Show You Your Heart.

Time Goes Too Quickly. This Is The Advice That My Mother Should Have Given Me From Her Hospital Bed. Instead Of Vague, Unknowable Quips Like "be Careful What You Wish For," She Should Have Told Me Time Slides Away On A Hillside Of Loose Shale And Takes Everything In Its Path - Dreams, Opportunities, Hopes. And Youth. It Takes That Fastest Of All.

Fifteen Minutes Later, Betsy Came Thundering Down The Stairs. "i'm Going To The Mall With Sierra To See A Movie." Michael Leaned Forward, Switched Off The Television. "can You Please Rephrase That In The Form Of A Question?" "sure. Can I Have Some Money?

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

Stacey: "i'm Surprised You Haven't Thrown Me Out." Comfort: "at Your Current Weight, I'd Need Some Sort Of Catapult.

It Was The Magic Hour, The Moment In Time When Every Leaf And Blade Of Grass Seemed To Separate, When Sunlight, Burnished By The Rain And Softened By The Coming Night, Gave The World An Impossibly Beautiful Glow.

As Mothers And Daughters, We Are Connected With One Another. My Mother Is The Bones Of My Spine, Keeping Me Straight And True. She Is My Blood, Making Sure It Runs Rich And Strong. She Is The Beating Of My Heart. I Cannot Now Imagine A Life Without Her.

The Falling Apart Of A Man's Life Should Make More Noise. It Should Startle Passesrby With Its Sturm And Drang. It Ought To Sound Like The Parthenon Crashing Down. Not This Ordinary, Everyday Kind Of Quiet...he Closed His Eyes...and Still It Was Quiet, This Falling Apart Of His Life, As Silent As The Last Beat Of An Old Man's Heart. A Quiet, Echoing Thud, And Then...nothing.

I Didn't Know How...deep Love Ran, How It Was In Your Blood, Not Your Heart, And How That Same Blood Pumped Through Your Veins Your Whole Life.

When You Get . . . To The End, You See That Love And Family Are All There Is. Nothing Else Matters.

Love And Family

I Know About Forgiving People And Loving Them Anyway, Even After They Hurt You.

A Daughter Without Her Mother Is A Woman Broken. It Is A Loss That Turns To Arthritis And Settles Deep Into Her Bones.

To Those Who Are Here, Those Who Are Gone, And Those Who Are Lost.

Nobody's Strong Enough To Be A Parent. We Just Do It, Blindly, Going Forward On Faith And Love And Hope. That's All It Is...being Afraid...and Going On.

We Can't Live Other People's Lives For Them. Even If We Love Them.

I Am Such A Pacific Northwest Girl.

Pacific Northwest

It Isn’t About Being At The Same School Or The Same Town Or Even The Same Room. It’s About Being Together. Love Is A Choice You Make.

It’s A Promise Ring,” He Said Solemnly. “the Lady At The Store Said It’s What You Give The Girl You Love. It Means I Want To Marry You Someday.

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?

Rest Of Your Life

It's Not A Date. I Bought My Own Drink And I Didn't Shave My Legs.

But Sometimes One Person Can Hold You Up In Life, Keep You Standing, And Without That Hand To Hold, You Can Find Yourself Free-falling No Matter How Strong You Used To Be, No Matter How Hard You Try To Remain Steady.

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.

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.

Memories Are Who We Are. In The End, That's All The Luggage You Take With You. Love And Memories Are What Last.

A Romance Novel Focuses Exclusively On Two People Falling In Love. It Can't Be About A Woman Caring For Her Aging Mother Or Something Like That. It Can Have That Element, But It Has To Be Primarily About The Male-female Relationship.

Falling In Love

I'm An Insomniac Lately. It's One Of The Many Prizes You Find In The Cracker Jack Box Of A Crumbling [relationship].

The At-home Mother's Life: It Was A Race With No Finish Line.

She Used To Tell Me That She Couldn't Feel The Sunlight Anymore, Not Even When She Was Standing In It, Not Even When It Was Hot On Her Cheeks

Sometimes Holding On Was All You Could Do.

He Was Afraid That The Secrets She'd Kept Would Always Be Here, Inside Him, An Ugly Malignant Thing Lodged Near Enough To His Heart To Upset Its Rhythm, And Though It Could Be Removed, Cut Out, There Would Always Be Scars; Bits And Pieces Of It Would Remain In His Blood, Making It Wrong Somehow, So That If He Accidentally Sliced His Skin Open, His Blood Would--for One Heartbeat--flow As Black As India Ink Before It Remembered That It Should Be Red.

If She Wasn't Careful, She'd Slide Without A Ripple Into The Gently Flowing Stream Of Her Old Life, Pulled Back Under The Current Without A Wimper Of Protest. Another Housewife Lost In The Flow.

Honestly, I Believe That The Mother-daughter Relationship Is Magical, Complex, Potentially Dangerous, Profoundly Powerful, And Deeply Transformative. To Put It Simply, All Of Us Have This Relationship, And In A Very Real Way, "none Of Us Comes Out Alive." We Are All Formed First As Daughters And Then Tested As Mothers. There's Nothing Like Motherhood To Make Us Reassess How We Were As Daughters.

Maybe Time Didn't Heal Wounds Exactly, But It Gave You A Kind Of Armor, Or A New Perspective. A Way To Remember With A Smile Instead Of A Sob.

Hands Down, The Hardest Part For Me Is Coming Up With An Idea. I Spend About 14 Months Writing A Book, And That's A Lot Of Hours Spent Thinking About A Single Project. I Simply Have To Love The Idea. I'll Go Through Dozens Of Workable Ideas Until I Find The One That Lights My Fire.

We Women. As Glue For The Family. Lead Lives That Are Important And Conflicted. What We Women Choose To Give Up For Our Families Is Important And Valid.

What I Know Now About Life Is This: Your Mother Is A Part Of Everything You Do And Everything You Are.

And No One Drank Just One Shot Of Tequila.

The Measure Of A Society Is Its Compassion.

Whenever I Write About Motherhood - And I Write About It A Lot - I Am Drawing On My Experiences As A Mother And Also My Experiences As A Daughter.

Alice Started To Cry. It Came With No Sound, No Shuddering, No Childlike Hysterics, Just A Soul-deep Release That Turned Into Moisture And Dripped Down Her Puffy Pink Cheeks. She Touched Her Tears, Frowning. Then She Looked Up At Julia And Whimpered Two Words Before She Fell Asleep. ‘real Hurts.’

She'd Been Criticized For Holding The Reins Of Parenthood Too Tightly, Of Controlling Her Children Too Completely, But She Didn't Know How To Let Go. From The Moment She'd First Decided To Become A Mother, It Had Been An Epic Battle.

She Is Like A Child Picking At A Scab, Unable To Stop Herself Even Though She Knows It Will Hurt.

Some Stories Don't Have Happy Endings. Even Love Stories. Maybe Especially Love Stories.

I Guess No One Stays Friends For More Than Thirty Years Without Broken Hearts Along The Way.

This Is The Problem With Forever Friends. They Know Too Much.

Girls Like You Can't Understand," Julia Said, And It Was True. Ellie Had Been Popular. She Didn't Know That Some Hurts Were Like A Once-broken Bone. In The Right Weather, They Could Ache For A Lifetime.

Jude Remembered This Pain. Every Woman Had Felt Some Version Of It: The End Of First Love. It Was When You Learned, For Good And Always, That Love Could Be Impermanent.

At One Point, She'd Wanted To Hurl The Whole Breakfast At The Wall. And Then She'd Remember Why It Was That Men Had Temper Tantrums And Women Didn't: Cleanup.

It Was True; Always Had Been. Friendships Were Like Marriages In That Way. Routines And Patterns Were Poured Early And Hardened Like Cement.

Liam Learned That It Was Possible To Appear To Move Forward When You Were Really Standing Still.

One Thing I Can Tell You For Sure Is This: We Only Regret What We Don't Do In Life.

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.

It Occurred To Her Suddenly, Sharply, That She Wanted To Be In Love... She Wanted Not To Feel So Damned Alone In The World.

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.

He Is A Man, And He Is Afraid. This Is Not A Good Combination.

In The Sea Of Grief, There Were Islands Of Grace, Moments In Time When One Could Remember What Was Left Rather Than All That Had Been Lost.

That Was The One Thing She Knew Now. Some Chances Came And Went, And If You Missed Them, You Could Spend The Rest Of Your Life Standing Alone, Waiting For An Opportunity That Had Already Passed You By.

Rest Of Your Life

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.

Nina Knew The Power Of Black And White Images. Sometimes A Thing Was Its Truest Self When The Colors Were Stripped Away.

Black And White

The Measure Of A Man Comes Down To Moments, Spread Out Like Dots Of Pain On The Canvas On Life. Everything You Were, Everything You'll Someday Be, Resides In The Small, Seemingly Ordinary Choices Of Everyday Life.....each Decision Seems As Insignificant As A Left Turn On An Unfamiliar Road When You Have No Destination In Mind. But The Decisions Accumulate Until You Realize One Day That They've Made You The Man That You Are.

Sitting Around And Waiting For Your Muse Is Not The Best Choice.

Popularity Means People Think They Know You.

Their Friendship Was More Important Than Any Relationship. Guys Would Come And Go; Girlfriends Were Forever.

Marriages Go Through Hard Times. Sometimes You Have To Get In There And Fight For Your Love. That's The Only Way For It To Get Better.

No Mother. Two Small Words, And Yet Within Them Lay A Bottomless Well Of Pain And Loss, A Ceaseless Mourning For Touches That Were Never Received And Words Of Wisdom That Were Never Spoken. No Single Word Was Big Enough To Adequately Describe The Loss Of Your Mother.

The Hallmark Of My Books Is The Relationships That Define Women's Lives.

Finding Your Passion Isn't Just About Careers And Money. It's About Finding Your Authentic Self. The One You've Buried Beneath Other People's Needs.

Goddamn, Sometimes It Hurt To Be Free.

She Had Been Ready To Love This Man From The Moment She First Saw Him. In All These Years, That Had Never Changed. They'd Hurt Each Other, Let Each Other Down, And Yet, Here They Were After Everything, Together. She Needed Him Now, Needed Him To Remind Her That She Was Live, That She Wasn't Alone, That She Hadn't Lost Everything.

Sometimes Being A Good Friend Means Saying Nothing.

Oh, Mia. You Haven’t Even Begun To Find Out Who You Really Are, And, Believe Me, Other Boys Are Going To Fall In Love With You. If A Guy Can’t See How Special You Are, He Isn’t Good Enough For You.

Falling In Love

You Look Great," He Said. It Made Her Smile, Even If It Was A Lie. "i'm As Big As A House." He Laughed. "i Like Houses. In Fact, I'm Thinking About Architecture As A Career.

Promises Were A Lot Like Impressions. The Second One Didn't Count For Much.

Books + Friendship = Book Club

Lately He'd Been Seen Going Out Less And Less, Becoming That Strangest Of Animals In A Small Town: A Loner.

She Still Felt Shell-shocked By All Of It, Numb. Beneath The Numbness, Though, Was A Raw And Terrible Anger That Was Unlike Anything She'd Felt Before. She Had So Little Experience With Genuine Anger That It Scared Her. She Actually Worried That If She Started Screaming, She'd Never Stop.

Do You Love Him?" How Would I Know?" You'd Know.

I Always Thought It Was What I Wanted: To Be Loved And Admired. Now I Think Perhaps I'd Like To Be Known.

Wanted To Be Loved

....both Had Learned That Everything Could Change In An Instant, And That The Heartfelt Vows Of People In Love Were Fragile Words That, Once Shattered, Could Cut So Deeply You'd Bleed Forever.

Then He Left Her There, Standing Alone, Surrounded By Word Ghosts; Things She Could Have Said.

...this Fear Was Unbearable. It Unwrapped Who She Was, As Neatly As He'd Unwound Her Bandage, Leaving Too Much Pain And Ugliness Exposed. Nerve Endings; He'd Said They Were The Problem [causing Phantom Pain In The Amputated Limb]." Things That Cut Off, That Ended Abruptly Or Died--like Parents And Marriages--kept Hurting Forever.

I Have Often Wished In The Past Few Years That My Mom Were Here To Help Me As I Raised My Own Teenage Son. As A Girl, With My Own Mom, I Thought I Knew It All; Now I Know Better. Somewhere, I Know My Mom Is Smiling.

It's Not Intentions That Matter. It's Actions. We Are What We Do And Say, Not What We Intend To.

I Might Screw Up, I Might Embarrass You, I Might Yell At You, But I Will Never, Ever Stop Loving You. You're My First Born. The First Time I Held You... I Fell In Love So Hard It Cracked My Bones.

I Can Be A Little Ocd When It Comes To My Writing.

Caro: "bite Me." Ruby: "i Gave That Up In Kindergarten.

Thoughts - Even Fears - Were Airy Things, Formless Until You Made Them Solid With Your Voice And Once Given That Weight, They Could Crush You.

You Couldn't Give Up You For Them. But What If You Wanted Them More Than You Wanted A Singular Powerful You?

The Heat Made People Crazy. They Woke From Their Damp Bedsheets And Went In Search Of A Glass Of Water, Surprised To Find That When Their Vision Cleared, They Were Holding Instead The Gun They Kept Hidden In The Bookcase.

It Had Been Years Since She Question His Fidelity, But He'd Stepped On To The Old Fame Track Again, And That Was Where The Road Had Taken Them Before. Infidelity Could Be Forgiven, But Forgetting It Was Impossible. Strangely, That Wasn't What Bothered Her The Most. What Bothered Her Was That She Didn't Really Care.

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.

Sometimes You Simply Made The Wrong Choice And You Had To Live With It. You Could Only Change The Future.

There Are Always Times In Life That You Don't Fit In. But You Have To Go Forward And Make A Place For Yourself. That's What Growing Up Is All About. Being Strong And Believing In Yourself-even When You're Most Afraid.

And Before You Barrel Through Some Idiotic Cosmo Girl List Of How-well-do-you-know-your-man Questions, Let Me Say That I Don't Know Squat About Him Except That He Kisses Like A God And Screws Like A Devil.

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