Alice Hoffman Quotes

Interesting, but she could see that the boy didn't have a single lie in him. A very rare condition, especially for the male of the species. ~ Alice Hoffman

Perhaps I was drawn to stories in which people found their true desires because I was a stranger to myself. ~ Alice Hoffman

He opened his eyes for an instant. Other people were writing and melting, but my brother stopped his flight long enough to look at me. An instant that would have to last forever. And then the flames rose higher and my brother was gone. ~ Alice Hoffman

Mean people are meaningless. ~ Alice Hoffman

If we had no hurt and no sin to speak of, we'd be angels, and amgels can't love the way men and women do. ~ Alice Hoffman

If you tried to right all the wrongs in the world you'd exhaust yourself in under an hour. ~ Alice Hoffman

The nature of love had totally escaped her until now. She had thought that if you lost it, you could never get it back, like a stone thrown down a well. But it was like the water at the bottom of the well, there when you can't even see it, shifting in the dark. ~ Alice Hoffman

When a star reaches for you, it is difficult to look away. ~ Alice Hoffman

That's the way love sounds, my mother told me. You think it should feel like honey, but instead it cuts like a knife. ~ Alice Hoffman

In the garden where the lilacs were so tall it was impossible to see the road. The leaves were dusty, the way they always were in August when the weather turned hot. ~ Alice Hoffman

Do what you want, do what you will, do what you have to, do what you think you cannot. ~ Alice Hoffman

Each morning when I arrive, the doves know me; their song rises and falls with pleasure and acceptance. It is always there, a river of sound. ~ Alice Hoffman

I'm fated to lose everyone I ever love, April said. I already know that.
Of course you are, Jet responded in her calm, measured tone. That's what it means to be alive. ~ Alice Hoffman

But in battle you cannot tell another when it is his time to enter the World-to-Come, nor is it possible to keep any man in this world when he wishes to leave it behind. ~ Alice Hoffman

You don't need wealth to appreciate something beautiful. ~ Alice Hoffman

I thought about how it was impossible to forget, no matter how hard anyone might try. ~ Alice Hoffman

The future was spun from moments like this. If she backed away, it might all unravel. ~ Alice Hoffman

They sealed this promise by hooking pinkies, the way they used to, long ago, when promises didn't hurt as much. ~ Alice Hoffman

It's not easy. It never is. That is the secret our parents fail to tell us, out of kindness and love, but it's a secret we need to know. Everything that begins, ends. Everything beautiful disappears. ~ Alice Hoffman

She's not a demon, she's a woman," my mother said sadly. "In this case, that's worse. ~ Alice Hoffman

Stone should last forever, but on that night I came to understand that a stone was only another form of dust. Streams of holy dust loomed in the air, and every breath included remnants of the Temple, so that we inhaled that which was meant to stand through eternity. ~ Alice Hoffman

Just know that what's done can be undone, but what's undone can never again be. ~ Alice Hoffman

Although my father had never been there, I came to believe I would someday see that city for him. ~ Alice Hoffman

I can't really work on more than one thing at a time. ~ Alice Hoffman

He thought of Jesus as a great teacher, a rebel who refused to see the poor and disenfranchised mistreated. ~ Alice Hoffman

A pretty little minnow ... cool as rain, blue as heaven ... ~ Alice Hoffman

I had always done as he asked, not because I was bound to do so by duty but because I saw the depth of who he was and how he himself suffered. ~ Alice Hoffman

My grandmother told me once that when you lose somebody you think you've lost the whole world as well, but that's not the way things turn out in the end. Eventually, you pick yourself up and look out the window, and once you do you see everything that was there before the world ended is out there still. There are the same apple trees and the same songbirds, and over our heads, the very same sky that shines like heaven, so far above us we can never hope to reach such heights. ~ Alice Hoffman

They say the truest beauty is in the harshest land and that God can be found there by those with open eyes. ~ Alice Hoffman

Over the years I had grown attached to it, as men grow attached to their miseries and their burdens. ~ Alice Hoffman

I knew that men told you the truth for one of two reasons: when they wished to be rid of what they couldn't bear to carry, or when they wished to include you in what they knew so their stories wouldn't be lost. ~ Alice Hoffman

There's a little witch in all of us. ~ Alice Hoffman

He's so kindhearted no dog has ever barked at him. No child has ever cried in front of him. No bee has ever tried to sting him. ~ Alice Hoffman

Young Sally Owens: He will hear my call a mile away. He will whistle my favorite song. He can ride a pony backwards.
Young Gillian Owens: What are you doing?
Young Sally Owens: Summoning up a true love spell called Amas Veritas. He can flip pancakes in the air. He'll be marvelously kind. And his favorite shape will be a star. And he'll have one green eye and one blue.
Young Gillian Owens: Thought you never wanted to fall in love.
Young Sally Owens: That's the point. The guy I dreamed of doesn't exist. And if he doesn't exist I'll never die of a broken heart. ~ Alice Hoffman

Believers with nothing to believe in. ~ Alice Hoffman

Did you not think this was what the world was like? the Man from the Valley said to me. ~ Alice Hoffman

In the dark morning light, her gray eyes look completely green, as though they belonged to a cat that can see in the dark. ~ Alice Hoffman

There are those who say that heaven and hell are not so far apart. They are not at opposite ends of the world beyond ours, only a step away from one another. ~ Alice Hoffman

Desire had a way of making a person oddly courageous. ~ Alice Hoffman

Even as a small child, I understood that woman had secrets, and that some of these were only to be told to daughters. In this way we were bound together for eternity. ~ Alice Hoffman

Do as you will, but harm no one.

What you give will be returned to you threefold.

Fall in love whenever you can. ~ Alice Hoffman

He must be an idiot to feel this way, but there's nothing he can do. He doesn't even know if he can manage to speak. ~ Alice Hoffman

The day had begun, cool and clear and absolutely impossible to avoid ~ Alice Hoffman

Time was like a river, and I was a fish in that river, moving so quickly that the world outside my household was blur. ~ Alice Hoffman

Once you possess something others do not, you are a target for the wicked. ~ Alice Hoffman

All things change, for that is the way of the world we walk through. ~ Alice Hoffman

Feel lucky for what you have when you have it. Isn't that the point? Happily ever after doesn't mean happy forever. The ever after, what precisely was that? Your dreams, your life, your death, your everything. Was it the blank space that went on without us? The forever after we were gone? ~ Alice Hoffman

You know who you are. And I suggest you never deny it. ~ Alice Hoffman

We stood and watched as God abandoned us, and then we did the best we could. ~ Alice Hoffman

The original fairy tale was about the youngest sister going into a room in the castle and finding all the bodies of the wives that came before her - she is confronted with truth, thinking about how often we think we know people and we really don't. ~ Alice Hoffman

WITCHES TAKE THEIR NAMES FROM PLACES, for places are what give them their strength. The place need not be beautiful, or habitable, or even green. Sand and salt, so much the better. Scrub pine, plumberry, and brambles, better still. From every bitter thing, after all, something hardy will surely grow. From every difficulty, the seed that's sewn is that much stronger. Ruin is the milk all witches must drink; it's the lesson they learn and the diet they're fed upon. ~ Alice Hoffman

When you start writing the magic comes when the characters seem to take on a life of their own and write the words for themselves. ~ Alice Hoffman

If this was what angels observed when they gazed upon our world, how we might murder each other and cause one another agony, then I pitied them as I pitied no others. ~ Alice Hoffman

And so many orchards circled the village that on some crisp October afternoons the whole wold smelled like pie. ~ Alice Hoffman

And from then on whenever he smells lilacs he'll think about this moment. How the bees were circling above him, how purple the ink on the leaflets he's been distributing suddenly seemed, how he realized, all at once, just how beautiful a woman can be. ~ Alice Hoffman

Revenge did that to a person; it caused even the insecure and the meek to take foolhardy chances. After a while it became a way of life; the risks felt as natural as drawing a breath. ~ Alice Hoffman

Listen carefully. Listen and you'll hear everything you need to know.

a nightmare is a different case entirely, it's a box of black shadows and vicious red stars, something to keep carefully closed, lest the ground below be broken in two

now it's a time like any other, long minutes, tedious seconds, nothing more than flat time moving forward, like it or not

it is impossible to stop some things, rainfall, for instance, and love at first sight, and the slow and steady path of sorrow

the cruel and desperate variety that always accompanies yearning for someone you're bound to lose

when you lose somebody you think you've lost the whole world as well, but that's not the way things turn out in the end. eventually, you pick yourself up and look out the window, and once you do you see everything that was there before the world ended is out there still. there are the same apple trees and the same songbirds, and over our heads, the very same sky that shine like heaven, so far above us qw can never hope to reach such heights

sometimes those who love you best are the ones who leave you behind

hearts were made for being broken. there's really no way around it if you want to be a human being.


...consider what people are capable of going through in this world and how much courage it's possible to have

when someone kisses you with everything they feel, you don't stop thinking about it fo ~ Alice Hoffman

He was so pale the freckles stood out on his face the way they did when he was upset or hadn't slept. She thought they might be telling her something if she could only understand the language of freckles. ~ Alice Hoffman

When Juliet came flying down the hallway, Stella didn't recognize her friend. Juliet hadn't bothered with makeup; she was wearing a nightgown underneath her raincoat and had on plastic flip-flops. This was the way loved walked in, barely dressed, confused, panic-stricken, overcome, not caring what anyone thought or what they believed. ~ Alice Hoffman

She feels her love inside her as if it were as tangible as blood and bones. They'll ~ Alice Hoffman

(Love) walks up to you,and when it does, you need to recognize it for what it is and, perhaps more important, for what it might become. ~ Alice Hoffman

Women know things that men will never know. We keep the best secrets. We tell the best stories. ~ Alice Hoffman

You don't fight for peace sister,' Nahara told me, 'You embrace it. ~ Alice Hoffman

People said love was the antidote to hate, that it could mend what was most broken, and give hope in the most hopeless of times. ~ Alice Hoffman

When she reached 44 Greenwich Avenue she went inside alone, and only the crow knew that it was possible for a woman to claim to have no heart at all and still cry as though her heart would break ~ Alice Hoffman

We can offer women what they want most of all, cures for the most common ailments of this world ... When children are ailing or babies refuse to be born, when men are unfaithful, when the sky is empty of rain, when the amulets buried beneath holy wall upon instructions of the minim offer not solace and all entreaties to the priests for guidance fail, when the rituals they offer bring no comfort and no consolation, they come to us. ~ Alice Hoffman

I think of life as a book of stories. You move through the stories and the characters change. But once you have a name on your skin you are stuck with one story, even if it's a bad one. ~ Alice Hoffman

No one knows how to write a novel until it's been written. ~ Alice Hoffman

Perhaps in the cold my heart would freeze and I would care nothing for those I was forced to abandon. ~ Alice Hoffman

Young people believe that regret is something you will never feel if you simply do as you please, but sometimes it is a matter of degree. ~ Alice Hoffman

I'm glad it all happened," he says, "Even the bad parts. ~ Alice Hoffman

I was not pleased to be sent from my mother, but I occupied myself, a skill learned by children who must sometimes act older than their age. ~ Alice Hoffman

Ironically, now that my children are older and gone quite a bit, I find it harder to work when they're not around. Too much free time! ~ Alice Hoffman

the logic of fairy tales was that there was no logic: bad things happened to the innocent, children were set out in the woods by their parents, fear walked hand in hand with experience, a wish spoken aloud could make it so. I ~ Alice Hoffman

In losing a friend, she is reminded of all she has lost and all she stands to lose again. There is nothing to be done to make it any easier. We all grieve alone. ~ Alice Hoffman

What he was doing was actually a hundred times worse. He was telling her that he loved her, something he hadn't mentioned and may not have even known when they were married. She used to whisper it to him sometimes, while he was fucking her, and he had to turn off his mind every time she did that. For some reason that declaration had seemed like a curse to him back then; he couldn't even hear it spoken aloud ~ Alice Hoffman

The past was what we carried with us, threaded to the future, and we decided whether to keep it close or let it go. Fate was both what we were given and what we made for ourselves. ~ Alice Hoffman

The children on the playground all heard her. They took off running together, as far away as possible from Antonia Owens, who might hex you if you did her wrong, and from her aunts, who might boil up garden toads and slip them into your stew, and from her mother, who was so angry and protective she might just freeze you in time, ensuring that you were forever trapped on the green grass at the age of ten or eleven. ~ Alice Hoffman

Love like this was all consuming. I found that I was jealous of the strangest things - sunlight, streets, curtains, even her clothing, anything that was close to her. ~ Alice Hoffman

I've been a screenwriter for twenty-five years. Every one of my books have been optioned for movies and I have written a few of those screenplays. ~ Alice Hoffman

The garden was burning, the air sparked with specks of flame as they say it will be in the World-to-Come when we walk beside the angels and have no fear of their illuminations or of their might. ~ Alice Hoffman

In my memories I have set my life in Brooklyn between pieces of glass, separate from my current existence, and this has enabled me to move forward. The past cannot tie me in knots, nor can it cause me to drown. And yet what is stored in glass belongs to me still. Each piece is a part of me: the hummingbirds, the locked doors, Mr. Morris in the yard, the pear tree, the woman covered by bees, and you. Especially you. ~ Alice Hoffman

Sometimes I feel like there's a hole inside of me, an emptiness that at times seems to burn. I think if you lifted my heart to your ear, you could probably hear the ocean. The moon tonight, there's a circle around it. Sign of trouble not far behind. I have this dream of being whole. Of not going to sleep each night, wanting. But still sometimes, when the wind is warm or the crickets sing... I dream of a love that even time will lie down and be still for. I just want someone to love me. I want to be seen. I don't know. Maybe I had my happiness. I don't want to believe it but, there is no man, Gilly. Only that moon. ~ Alice Hoffman

Men think about right and wrong, they have to debate it, discuss it, draw upon possibilities and statistics, laws and codes. Wolves have to know. They have to know in an instant, pure instinct, not thought, because they can never be wrong. If they're wrong, the ice they walk upon cracks, their lungs filled with cold water and crystals. If they're wrong, their brothers and sisters starve and their pups are shot as they run. If they're wrong, the rabid wolf comes back, and he always comes back, only this time they're sleeping, and they can't even put up a fight as he splits them apart. ~ Alice Hoffman

Everyone should know exactly what everyone else is thinking and then people wouldn't hurt each other so much. ~ Alice Hoffman

That was the sorrow of it. He saw the light but never expected the darkness. ~ Alice Hoffman

Life was beautiful, everyone knew that, but it was also bitter and bleak and unfair as hell and where did that leave a person? On the outs with the rest of the world. Someone who sat alone in the cafeteria, reading, escaping from his hometown simply by turning the page. ~ Alice Hoffman

Lately, she's been wondering if perhaps when the living become the dead they leave an empty space behind, a hollow no one else can fill. ~ Alice Hoffman

Weapons are kept from women, but such a naming suggests that perhaps men fear our talents in war as well as our desire for peace. ~ Alice Hoffman

She wishes nightmares were all that kept her awake. She cannot tell which disturbs here more, the future or the past. ~ Alice Hoffman

She said this world was a hole of darkness, of black light and evil and loss.
But if that were true, there would never have been any bright light in our lives. My mother would never have existed, my brother would never have been such a fine man, Andres would not be waiting for me somewhere, though I didn't know where. ~ Alice Hoffman

The priests were deferential, siding with Rome, and those who opposed them were said to be robbers and thugs, my father and his friends among ~ Alice Hoffman

Maybe some love was guaranteed. Maybe it fit inside you and around you like skin and bones. ~ Alice Hoffman

It was amazing how many colors there were, all running into the gutter in a stream: a dozen shades of blue, twenty different reds, and all that black soot, like a nightmare given form, the insides of a heart, destroyed so easily, done away with before anyone could stop the damage, or salvage what was lost, or even try to save him. ~ Alice Hoffman

I knelt by the fire to make certain there were no burning embers left. That was when I spied the tracks of a lion. There were only a few such beasts left in the desert, but one had come here, answering my call. He had been there all the while, watching over me, before he left me at last. ~ Alice Hoffman

Men and women rarely speak to each other, though they often talk. ~ Alice Hoffman

Demons were said to be cruel, but a demon would never have been so brutal as this. A demon merely called you by name, threw his arms around you, whispered his plight, understood yours, then took you for his own. ~ Alice Hoffman

You ever put your arms out and spin really, really fast ?
Well, that's what loves like. It makes your heart race. It turns the world upside down. But if you're not careful, if you don't keep your eyes on something still, you can lose your balance. You can't see what's happening to the people around you. You can't see your about to fall

Practical magic ~ Alice Hoffman

Lydia went over and handed him a paper napkin. Conner stared at the napkin as if it were something delivered directly from the moon. ~ Alice Hoffman

What if your brother is dying and you can't stop it. What do you do?"
...
"You help him find something that makes him feel that he still wants to be alive. Only thing to do. ~ Alice Hoffman