Alice Quotes

What's the first word you think if when I say 'angel'?" asked Mallory.
Alice shrugged. "I don't know… guns? ~ Lou Morgan

The highest form of morality is not to feel at home in ones own home. Most great works of the imagination were meant to make you feel like a stranger in your own home. The best fiction always forced us to question what we took for granted. It questioned traditions and expectations when they seemed too immutable. I told my students I wanted them in their readings to consider in what ways these works unsettled them, made them a little uneasy, made them look around and consider the world, like Alice in Wonderland, through different eyes. ~ Azar Nafisi

Writing this letter is like putting a note in a bottle
And hoping
It will reach Japan. ~ Alice Munro

A man another woman can steal from you ain't your man no way ~ Alice Randall

Alice felt dreadfully puzzled. The Hatter's remark seemed to have no sort of meaning in it, and yet it was certainly English. 'I don't quite understand you,' she said, as politely as she could. ~ Lewis Carroll

Personally, I like films that make me a little bit uncomfortable because I think you're uncomfortable when something is real. ~ Alice Englert

HELPED are those who laugh with a pure heart; theirs will be the company of the jolly righteous. ~ Alice Walker

When will women begin to have the first glimmer that above all other loyalties is the loyalty toTruth, i.e., to yourself, that husband, children, friends and countryare as nothing to that. ~ Alice James

Marry me." A statement. Not a question. It came again. "Marry. Me." His eyes burned into
mine. I breathed in, my ears ringing. My pulse sped up, my heart raced, I was trying to remember exactly what breathing meant. I was wet, and I was gasping.
"I want you. I want that, what they had today. I want it all, and I want it with you. I want you, want you to be my wife. I've got a ring, I'll give it to you right now if you'll say yes." With every
word, his hands tightened on my hips, desperate, crazy, longing. "I had this all planned out, so much smoother and romantic and everything you deserve. But my head's been spinning since
yesterday, when I saw my best friend steal a van to go meet his new family. And all I want, all I've ever wanted, is exactly that. Exactly you. And when I walked up those stairs, and heard the
shower go on, and knew you were in here all naked and wet and waiting for me, I knew I couldn't wait another day, another hour, another minute, without asking you to be my wife. So. Marry. Me."
He knelt. Christ on a crutch, he knelt on the shower floor, where he had knelt countless times before . . . ahem . . . took my hand, and repeated those words
again. Finally, with a question mark at the end. "Marry me?"
And in that moment, I realized all the worrying, all the hand wringing and wonder ponder, all the thoughts about who says what's right for a couple, and when is it too soon, and when is it the right time, and if it ain't b ~ Alice Clayton

I have never made fun of religion. Religion is something I don't even want to mess with, because I am really afraid of the clouds opening up and my being struck by lightning. ~ Alice Cooper

The planetary-etheric body is whole, unbroken and continuous; of this etheric body, those of the healer and patient are intrinsic parts ... ~ Alice Bailey

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

Grace does not share ice cream. She does, however, talk about herself in the third person. ~ Alice Clayton

I could never live happily in Africa-or anywhere else-until I could live freely in Mississippi. ~ Alice Walker

In search of my mother's garden, I found my own. ~ Alice Walker

Do you know what O'Keefe Says about blue? he asked her, blowing out a cloud of smoke, warming to her voice, though he did not remember her face clearly from the opening night's exhibition.
What?
That it is the color that will remain after everything is destroyed. ~ Alice Walker

Why aren't you happy in America, if everyone there drives motorcars? ~ Alice Walker

I love the shit out of you. So calm down and just tell me what you need. -Simon ~ Alice Clayton

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

But they say just like they know history before the white children start to come, they know the future after the biggest of 'em leave. They say they know these particular children and they gon kill each other off, they still so mad bout being unwanted. Gon kill off a lot of other folk too who got some color. In fact, they gon kill off so much of the earth and the colored that everybody gon hate them just like they hate us today. Then they will become the new serpent. And wherever a white person is found he'll be crush by somebody not white, just like they do us today. ~ Alice Walker

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

Instinct tells me to close my eyes and I plunge myself back into the darkness, back to my world of being seen but not heard. ~ Alice Feeney

It just seemed that we always ended up at the Rainbow, to the point where they finally just said, 'Why don't you guys go up into this loft, where we'll kind of protect people from coming around and sitting on the tables.' And we thought that was a great idea. ~ Alice Cooper

You care for me?" My jaw twitched. "Alice, I- I care about our principal, and my boss, and the lady at the donut shop who gives me extra donut holes. But I love you," I spat. "And you know what that feels like? It's like a fucking cheese grater against my heart. ~ Julie Murphy

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

It seems everyone wants to know if I have an eating disorder, and playing an anorexic character on 'Make it or Break It' probably didn't help much. To set the record straight, I certainly do not have an eating disorder. I think as anyone can gather, I love food, and it is not just a front to cover up the fact that I don't eat any. ~ Alice Greczyn

We should have scant notion of the gardens of these New England colonists in the seventeenth century were it not for a cheerful traveller named John Josselyn, a man of everyday tastes and much inquisitiveness, and the pleasing literary style which comes from directness, and an absence of self-consciousness. ~ Alice Morse Earle

Prepare yourself, I'm taking bread out of the oven.
Don't tease me, woman ... zucchini? Cranberry orange.
Mmmm ... No woman has ever done breakfast bread foreplay the way you do. ~ Alice Clayton

I have read various articles on the fourth dimension, the relativity theory of Einstein, and other psychological speculation on the constitution of the universe; and after reading them I feel as Senator Brandegee felt after a celebrated dinner in Washington. "I feel," he said, "as if I had been wandering with Alice in Wonderland and had tea with the Mad Hatter." ~ Charles Lane Poor

She barely notices when I say that I am going on to Toronto to visit my grandparents. Except to remark that they must be really old. Not a word about Alister. Not even a bad word. She would not have forgotten. Just tidied up the scene and put it away in a closet with her former selves. Or maybe she really is a person who can deal recklessly with humiliation. ~ Alice Munro

Spare no details-this shit is better than HBO. ~ Alice Clayton

And here Alice began to get rather sleepy, and went on saying to herself, in a dreamy sort of way, 'Do cats eat bats? Do cats eat bats?' and sometimes, 'Do bats eat cats?' for, you see, as she couldn't answer either question, it didn't much matter which way she put it. ~ Lewis Carroll

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

I am dark but fair, / Black but fair. ~ Alice Meynell

My father worked behind closed doors inside the house, had a huge ancient Latin dictionary on a wrought-iron stand, spoke Spanish on the phone, and drank sherry and ate raw meat, in the form of chorizo, at five o'clock. Until the day in the yard with my playmate I thought this was what fathers did. Then I began to catalog and notice. They mowed lawns. They drank beer. They played in the yard with their kids, walked around the block with their wives, piled into campers, and, when they went out, wore joke ties or polo shirts, not Phi Beta Kappa keys and tailored vests. ~ Alice Sebold

There are people out there who get annoyed at the story that Djuna barnes, rather than identify as a lesbian, preferred to say that she 'just loved Thelma.' Gertrude Stein reputedly made similar claims, albeit not in those exact terms, about Alice. I get why it's politically maddening, but I've also always thought it a little romantic - the romance of letting an individual experience of desire take precedence over a categorical one. ~ Maggie Nelson

They would go back to their homes and put me to rest, a letter from the past never reopened or reread. ~ Alice Sebold

When I was little, I was such a tomboy - I loved a baggy T-shirt and leggings. ~ Alice Dellal

... People have (with the help of conventions) oriented all their solutions toward the easy and toward the easiest side of the easy; but it is clear that we must hold to what is difficult; everything in Nature grows and defends itself in its own way and is characteristically and spontaneously itself, seeks at all costs to be so and against all opposition. - Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet ~ Alice Walker

Life is like a game of chess; you just have to play it backwards and work out all the moves you need to make in advance, to get where you need to be. ~ Alice Feeney

Just as a pool of water cannot reflect the sky overhead when it is restless and disturbed, so we can never get a perfect vision of the Divine, and show it to others when we are disturbed with human thoughts and personal problems. It is only when we are quite still and receptive that God can think His thoughts into us and use us for His purposes. ~ Alice Hegan Rice

The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don't have any. ~ Alice Walker

Today I should not be identified with any kind of regressive therapy. ~ Alice Miller

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

Be content, Be grateful, Be loving, Be happy, and this lifestyle will not only change YOUR life, it will change OUR world. I finally grasped the true meaning of let go- let God. (An excerpt from Finding Inner Peace) ~ Alice Hocker

The safety argument against steroids may be a good one, but let's be honest. It isn't the one that motivates most officials and fans to frown on steroids. Steroid use does not just seem risky or unnatural, it seems to disrupt the level playing field. ~ Alice Dreger

One of the jurors had a pencil that squeaked. This of course, Alice could not stand, and she went round the court and got behind him, and very soon found an opportunity of taking it away. She did it so quickly that the poor little juror (it was Bill, the Lizard) could not make out at all what had become of it; so, after hunting all about for it, he was obliged to write with one finger for the rest of the day; and this was of very little use, as it left no mark on the slate. 'Herald, ~ Lewis Carroll

Optimism is the last resort of those in deep despair. There can't be any optimists in heaven. ~ Alice Thomas Ellis

All governments lie, as I.F. Stone pointed out, including Israel and Hamas. But Israel engages in the kinds of jaw-dropping lies that characterize despotic and totalitarian regimes. It does not deform the truth; it inverts it. It routinely paints a picture for the outside world that is diametrically opposed to reality. And all of us reporters who have covered the occupied territories have run into Israel's Alice-in-Wonderland narratives, which we dutifully insert into our stories - required under the rules of American journalism - although we know they are untrue. ~ Chris Hedges

Some people don't understand that it is the nature of the eye to have seen forever, and the nature of the mind to recall anything that was ever known. ~ Alice Walker

Do not
be
like
cows
grazing
watching
the
butcher. ~ Alice Walker

It didn't take long to realize I didn't hardly know nothing. And that if you ast yourself why you black or a man or a woman or a bush it don't mean nothing if you don't ast why you here, period ~ Alice Walker

Yes!" He says. "Fear is an excellent motivator. I find that it really brings out the true ingenuity of a creature. ~ M.D. Elster

She wished the man outside really were Thomas, so she and Billups could again have the same enemy and the same fear.O ~ Ayana Mathis

I read a little bit of nonfiction and a lot of poetry. I think of poetry as my shot of whiskey when I don't have time to savor a whole bottle of wine. ~ Alice McDermott

I am lonesome so regular it's like a job I gotta report to every day. ~ Alice Childress

It's a question of trying to take down by dictation what's already there. I'm not making something, I'm trying to hear it. ~ Alice Oswald

Alice had this magical look about her, like she would be at home in front of a hearth, wrapped in a large quilt, telling nursery rhymes to sweet-faced forest critters. ~ Alexandra Bracken

Illness sets the mind free sometimes to roam and surmise. ~ Alice B. Toklas

It's a comfort to always find pasta in the cupboard and garlic and parsley in the garden. ~ Alice Waters

We need to have a course in school that teaches about ecology and gastronomy. I could imagine that all children could eat at school for free and that the cafeteria would become part of the school's curriculum. ~ Alice Waters

I moaned like a whore in church.
To be fair, I'd never actually heard a whore moan in church, but I had a feeling it sounded a lot like the unholy sounds pouring forth from my mouth. ~ Alice Clayton

it was this inner peace that attracted peace around her. ~ Alice Walker

The college library was a high beautiful space, designed and built and paid for by people who believed that those who sat at the long tables before open books - even those who were hung-over, sleepy, resentful, and uncomprehending - should have space above them, panels of dark gleaming wood around them, high windows bordered with Latin admonitions, through which to look at the sky. For a few years before they went into schoolteaching or business or began to rear children, they should have that. And now it was my turn and I should have it too. ~ Alice Munro

There are many technical workers who enjoy wandering so much that, like Alice in Wonderland, they don't much care where they go, so long as they get somewhere. ~ Gerald M. Weinberg

I believe that the biggest mistake that most people make when it comes to their retirement is they do not plan for it. They take the same route as Alice in the story from "Alice in Wonderland," in which the cat tells Alice that surely she will get somewhere as long as she walks long enough. It may not be exactly where you wanted to get to, but you certainly get somewhere. ~ Marc Singer

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

The stinging nettles that we must have got into are more insignificant plants, with a paler purple flower, and stalks wickedly outfitted with fine, fierce, skin-piercing and inflaming spines. Those would be present too, unnoticed, in all the flourishing of the waste meadow. ~ Alice Munro

The first meeting-houses were often built in the valleys, in the meadow lands; for the dwelling-houses must be clustered around them, since the colonists were ordered by law to build their new homes within half a mile of the meeting-house. ~ Alice Morse Earle

I think if you buy from people who are taking care of the land, you're supporting the future of this country. ~ Alice Waters

I've got a surprise." Jase opens the door of the van for me a couple days later. I haven't seen Tim or Nan since the incident at the B&T, and I'm secretly glad for a break from the drama.
I slide into the van, my sneakers crunching into a crumpled pile of magazines, an empty Dunkin' Donuts coffee cup, various Poland Spring and Gatorade bottles, and lots of unidentifiable snack wrappers. Alice and her Bug are evidently still at work.
"A surprise, for me?" I ask, intrigued.
"Well, it's for me, but you too, kind of. I mean, it's something I want you to see."
This sounds a little unnerving. "Is it a body part?" I ask.
Jase rolls his eyes. "No. Jeez. I hope I'd be smoother than that."
I laugh. "Okay. Just checking. ~ Huntley Fitzpatrick

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

It is heartrending to read the entries in many an old family Bible - the records of suffering, distress, and blasted hopes. ~ Alice Morse Earle

Desolate
Life is so dreary and desolate
Women and men in the crowd meet and mingle,
Yet with itself every soul standeth single,
Deep out of sympathy moaning its moan
Holding and having its brief exultation
Making its lonesome and low lamentation
Fighting its terrible conflicts alone. ~ Alice Cary

She was not a beauteous maiden and he had not rescued her from her tower. If anything, she had called down to him and he had pointed out there was a door. The many steps leading to her freedom had to be scaled by Linnet alone. ~ Alice Coldbreath

Sophie, you saw Alice's transformation."
I nodded. "And the murder of my great-grandfather. Weird it showed me that when I've had so many other awful things happen directly to me," I said, beginning to tick them off on my fingers. "Elodie getting killed, having to kill Alice, escaping a burning building with the help of a ghost ... " And then, because both my parents looked so deflated, I added, "Oh, and this really heinous pageboy haircut in sixth grade."
A few wan smiles appeared, but I think it was just to humor me.
"Yes, but that was the act that was directly responsible for all of those other horrible events," Dad said. "Well, except for the haircut. I suspect that can be laid at your mother's door."
"James!" Mom protested, but I swear I heard affection behind it. I think Dad did, too, because his lips quirked upward briefly. ~ Rachel Hawkins

The study of tavern history often brings to light much evidence of sad domestic changes. Many a cherished and beautiful home, rich in annals of family prosperity and private hospitality, ended its days as a tavern. ~ Alice Morse Earle

If I can get on to my sofa and occupy myself for four hours, at intervals through the day, scribbling my notes, and able to read the books that belong to me, in that they clarify the density, and shape the formless mass within, life seems inconceivably rich ... ~ Alice James

Drugs will have a huge effect on my work for the rest of my life, whether I'm using or not. ~ Layne Staley

How heroic to be able to suppress one's vanity to the extent of confessing that the game is too hard. ~ Alice James

There is a hint of despair in the cry of 'I told you so,' an element of disappointment in the apparent satisfaction when idols turn out to have clay feet. The human race, when it thinks it has proved that no one is superior, is partly gratified and partly depressed. ~ Alice Thomas Ellis

Being me is no different than being most anyone else, I guess. ~ Layne Staley

To give them credit, they tried. But how could they know? I wasn't shy. I was heartbroken. I'm still heartbroken. It's a permanent state of being. ~ Paige Toon

Various stars. Various kings.
Various sunsets, signs, cursory insights.
Many minute attentions, many knowledgeable watchers,
Much cold, much overbearing darkness.

Various long midwinter Glooms.
Various Solitary and Terrible Stars.
Many Frosty Nights, many previously Unseen Sky-flowers.
Many people setting out (some of them kings) all clutching at stars.

...

Various people coming home (some of them kings). Various headlights.
Two or three children standing or sitting on the low wall.
Various winds, the Sea Wind, the sound-laden Winds of Evening
Blowing the stars toward them, bringing snow. ~ Alice Oswald

You really can't be a good artist if you can't say what you really feel. And people may be offended, but, you know, that's how you feel, and that is your right, and that is your gift as well. ~ Alice Walker

His love for my mother wasn't about looking back and loving something that would never change. It was about loving my mother for everything
for her brokenness and her fleeing, for her being there right then in that moment before the sun rose and the hospital staff came in. It was about touching that hair with the side of his fingertip, and knowing yet plumbing fearlessly the depths of her ocean eyes. ~ Alice Sebold

I do not grieve in the abstract, but in the heart. ~ Alice Walker

One night, I lay awake for hours, just terrified. When the dawn finally came up - the comfortable blue sky, the familiar world returning - I could think of no other way to express my relief than through poetry. I made a decision there and then that it was what I wanted to do. Every time I pulled a wishbone, it was what I asked for. ~ Alice Oswald

Writing is a labor of love and also an act of defiance, a way to light a candle in a gale wind. ~ Alice Childress

And maybe you can't know me now.
Maybe I'm just blood. Whatever that's for. ~ Alice Notley

She stole my first kiss, first love and all those first things, which are remembered just because they've never been before ~ Alice Walsh

I wonder sometimes whether you've exploded already, like a star, and what I'm seeing you is three million years into the past, and you're not here anyore. How can we be together here, now, when you are so far away. When you are so far ago? I'm shouting so loudly, but you never turn around to see me. Perhaps it is I who have already exploded. Either way, we are going to bring beautiful things into the universe. ~ Alice Oseman

Her husband was asleep beside her. She could ~ Alice McDermott

do not fret - it leads only to evil. ~ Alice J. Wisler

Here is your schedule," she said, sliding a piece of paper to me.

I picked it up and read it aloud. "Wildcrafting 100, Alchemy of Baking 100, Teamancy 100, Magical Weapons Training 200, Creatures of Wonderland, and History of Wonderland. What, no Quidditch?"

"What's Quidditch? ~ Melanie Karsak

If Miss Elton spoke water instead of words, then there would have been a repetition of Noah's flood. ~ Kellyn Roth

Two days wrong!" sighed the Hatter. "I told you butter wouldn't suit the works!" he added, looking angrily at the March Hare. "It was the best butter," the March Hare meekly replied. ~ Lewis Carroll

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