Hannah Brencher > Quotes

“Some people are dotted lines and other people are destinations. Some people get you somewhere and some people are just a place to be, all in themselves. But you cannot force those dotted lines into destinations.”
― Hannah Brencher, If You Find This Letter: My Journey to Find Purpose Through Hundreds of Letters to Strangers

“Looking back, I wish that everyone could have that sort of moment: a moment where you realize that your hands are so impossibly small and this world is so impossibly big. And the two don’t seem to add up. Maybe recognizing the smallness of your own hands is just the very first step to changing anything at all.”
― Hannah Brencher, If You Find This Letter: My Journey to Find Purpose Through Hundreds of Letters to Strangers

“Even though love covers all things, fear is what keeps us silent and keeps words unsaid. Fear keeps us standing in one place. Eventually, when it wins, it means we never got the courage to say what we needed to say.”
― Hannah Brencher, If You Find This Letter: My Journey to Find Purpose Through Hundreds of Letters to Strangers

“And I learned from her that it is one thing to be the girl on fire, but it is entirely another thing to be the girl who manages to set the world on fire with all the quiet and beautiful things she does.”
― Hannah Brencher, If You Find This Letter: My Journey to Find Purpose Through Hundreds of Letters to Strangers

“...the definition of agape is loving a person for exactly who they are - not who we hope they'll become with enough fixing.”
― Hannah Brencher, If You Find This Letter: My Journey to Find Purpose Through Hundreds of Letters to Strangers

“I cried because sometimes no matter what you try to hide behind— letters or texts or emails or a busy schedule— life still finds a way to barrel through all the distractions. And life still hurts. Even though it's beautiful.”
― Hannah Brencher, If You Find This Letter: My Journey to Find Purpose Through Hundreds of Letters to Strangers

“Good-byes hurt. And they happen too much. The only thing I know for certain about this whole good-bye thing? You have to say it sometimes. You have to get real brave, and bite your bottom lip, and let people go sometimes. Fully, fully. Whether you feel ready or not, you're still going to grow up and use that word a lot more than you ever expected to.”
― Hannah Brencher, If You Find This Letter: My Journey to Find Purpose Through Hundreds of Letters to Strangers

“The best gift you are ever going to give someone— the permission to feel safe in their own skin. To feel worthy. To feel like they are enough.”
― Hannah Brencher

“Maybe we’re all a how are you away from not feeling so alone in all of this today.”
― Hannah Brencher, If You Find This Letter: My Journey to Find Purpose Through Hundreds of Letters to Strangers

“Life hands you a list of things you can keep. People are not things - you can't keep them.”
― Hannah Brencher, If You Find This Letter: My Journey to Find Purpose Through Hundreds of Letters to Strangers

“Build from the selfless place inside of you that is not big or loud or selfish or proud. Build from that little spot inside of you that burns quietly and unceasingly for others. Remember: whatever is burrowed deep in one hungry soul is bound to be tethered to the hearts of many, many more.”
― Hannah Brencher, If You Find This Letter: My Journey to Find Purpose Through Hundreds of Letters to Strangers

“I learned vulnerability is a bit like those Russian nesting dolls, the ones that get smaller and smaller in size when you twist the top off and pull another one out. In the end, you’re left with the tiniest dull, that one nugget. No more layers to take off. Nothing left but a surprise, the surprise of finding out the littlest doll is the most solid of them all. It doesn’t hide inside of itself.”
― Hannah Brencher, If You Find This Letter: My Journey to Find Purpose Through Hundreds of Letters to Strangers

“Life is a series of letting - go moments.”
― Hannah Brencher, If You Find This Letter: My Journey to Find Purpose Through Hundreds of Letters to Strangers

“There is something remarkable about just the thought of someone sitting down for you. Taking out a piece of paper for you. Focusing their mind on the words they write for you. And through sloppy cursive and a cramped hand, they manage to tell you all the things that have ever mattered, in between the lines: “I care. I’m here. I see you. You’re more than just words on a screen to me.”
― Hannah Brencher, If You Find This Letter: My Journey to Find Purpose Through Hundreds of Letters to Strangers

“When it came to talking with God, I wanted to believe he was like those stars. If I looked, he’d be there. I’d lost a lot of things in the years that led up to this point - shoes and keys and books and boyfriends - but I never lost that hope”
― Hannah Brencher, If You Find This Letter: My Journey to Find Purpose Through Hundreds of Letters to Strangers

“Agape" is loving a person for exactly who they are - not who we hope they'll become with enough fixing. It's this idea that every person has their layers, so you can never confine a person to only what you know about them from the first glance. It's stacked on the premise that to love anyone is to hope in them always.”
― Hannah Brencher, If You Find This Letter: My Journey to Find Purpose Through Hundreds of Letters to Strangers

“I needed to witness what it looked like when you eventually stopped asking questions and just started living the answers out loud.”
― Hannah Brencher, If You Find This Letter: My Journey to Find Purpose Through Hundreds of Letters to Strangers

“And that’s the truth I needed to swallow: people don’t step out and love for you; that’s on you. You have to be the one to get down deep enough and whisper the words people can’t always say for you - whether you believe in them full or not - “I choose you. I choose you.”
― Hannah Brencher, If You Find This Letter: My Journey to Find Purpose Through Hundreds of Letters to Strangers

“Like why do we even have to go through meeting people when we know they aren't going to stay in our lives?”
― Hannah Brencher, If You Find This Letter: My Journey to Find Purpose Through Hundreds of Letters to Strangers

“Do small things. On repeat. And think about others. I think that's it. That's all. I don't even worry anymore about becoming a piece of someone's history because (a) knowing isn't the point and (b) sometimes our greatest points of impact will be the kind we never come to know about.”
― Hannah Brencher, If You Find This Letter: My Journey to Find Purpose Through Hundreds of Letters to Strangers

“I think we worship these stories of leaving it all behind and going somewhere new, but I’m beginning to see that every one of those stories has the same truth holding up this romantic idea of leaving: The stuff you’re not facing will follow you. It will get in the car too. It will pack a bag too. Leaving isn’t the key; changing is. I’m learning that life isn’t about the destinations we can boast about getting to; it’s about all the walking in between that feels pointless when you try to take a picture of it because no one will understand it like you do. It’s the in between stuff that fleshes out a story—gives it guts and transformation.
It’s not about the scenery changing or the person you say good night to. The traveler must be the one to change. That’s what makes the story good.”
― Hannah Brencher, Come Matter Here: Your Invitation to Be Here in a Getting There World

“God is a lot of things to a lot of people but I don’t think he is a cheap party host with limited grace to give out.”
― Hannah Brencher, If You Find This Letter: My Journey to Find Purpose Through Hundreds of Letters to Strangers

“That’s why I wanted to be a writer - because someone I loved told me I could be one.”
― Hannah Brencher, If You Find This Letter: My Journey to Find Purpose Through Hundreds of Letters to Strangers

“I could have told you that the reason a lot of people never do anything, or go anywhere, or move to the place they've always wanted to move to or go after the things they always talked about, rarely boils down to other people's not believing in them. I believe now that we're the enemy to the things we really want for our lives. We get really good at telling ourselves ugly lies on repeat every day. "You're unworthy." "You're ugly." "You're inadequate.”
― Hannah Brencher, If You Find This Letter: My Journey to Find Purpose Through Hundreds of Letters to Strangers

“I pocketed strangers in my memory, one by one, and tied them closer for...all the ways they looked like me.”
― Hannah Brencher, If You Find This Letter: My Journey to Find Purpose Through Hundreds of Letters to Strangers

“You're worth it. You are absolutely, unbelievably worth it and you were made for mighty things. Keep pushing on. Keep pressing. Don't let anyone in this wide, wide world ever try to snuff out the light you bring. You have to know it matters. The world is going to try to convince you otherwise but don't listen. Please. Don't. Listen. You are a marvel. It matters that you are here.”
― Hannah Brencher, If You Find This Letter: My Journey to Find Purpose Through Hundreds of Letters to Strangers

“That is the trickiness of depression though. He doesn’t easily let you draw maps of him. He won’t tell you where you’re headed. You might have forests and I might have bogs. The most important thing is you just keep going. With no map. And no compass. And sometimes not even real truth to guide you. You just have to keep going. And along the way, you find things to hold tight to. Hope. And good conversations. And people who stick with you until morning. You find things to clutch. For me, that was a yellow towel from my mother.”
― Hannah Brencher, If You Find This Letter: My Journey to Find Purpose Through Hundreds of Letters to Strangers

“The professor taught with the confidence that books change you. They mess up your insides. They make you drool over the prospect of being a better human and a better lover and a better friend. They pull at your stomach and leave you raw and open and naked. Books can straight up mangle you and sometimes it’s just better if you let them do their work.”
― Hannah Brencher, If You Find This Letter: My Journey to Find Purpose Through Hundreds of Letters to Strangers

“Grace is letting something else—something so much bigger than you—carry you home. It’s having and wanting nowhere else to be but in a moment that wants you and takes you just as you are.”
― Hannah Brencher, If You Find This Letter: My Journey to Find Purpose Through Hundreds of Letters to Strangers

“Finally, finally, this is what bravery looks like. This is what courage looks like. It has nothing to do with dominating the day, every single day. It has to do with showing up and speaking truth. One true sentence after one true sentence.”
― Hannah Brencher, If You Find This Letter: My Journey to Find Purpose Through Hundreds of Letters to Strangers