Alice Hoffman famous quotes

Every time someone forgets, someone else disappears,' my brother wrote.
-- Alice Hoffman

#Brother #Forget #Disappear

Do you ever just put your arms out and just spin and spin and spin? Well, that's what love is like; everything inside of you tells you to stop before you fall, but for some reason you just keep going.
-- Alice Hoffman

#Fall #Love Is #Arms

I'm at the point where going forward is easier than going back.
-- Alice Hoffman

#Easier

Some things, when they change, never do return to the way they once were. Butterflies for instance, and women who've been in love with the wrong man too often.
-- Alice Hoffman

#Butterfly #Men #Way

When all is said and done, the weather and love are the two elements about which one can never be sure.
-- Alice Hoffman

#Love #Weather #Two

When the cold comes to New England it arrives in sheets of sleet and ice. In December, the wind wraps itself around bare trees and twists in between husbands and wives asleep in their beds. It shakes the shingles from the roofs and sifts through cracks in the plaster. The only green things left are the holly bushes and the old boxwood hedges in the village, and these are often painted white with snow. Chipmunks and weasels come to nest in basements and barns; owls find their way into attics. At night,the dark is blue and bluer still, as sapphire of night.
-- Alice Hoffman

#Husband #Dark #Night

He has the ability to catch someone by the way that he looks at her, and make her wish he would go on looking.
-- Alice Hoffman

#Wish #Looks #Goes On

Sometimes the right thing feels all wrong until it is over and done with.
-- Alice Hoffman

#Done #Sometimes #Feels

Do people choose the art that inspires them — do they think it over, decide they might prefer the fabulous to the real? For me, it was those early readings of fairy tales that made me who I was as a reader and, later on, as a storyteller.
-- Alice Hoffman

#Art #Real #Reading

It doesn't matter what people tell you. It doesn't matter what they might say. Sometimes you have to leave home. Sometimes, running away means you're headed in the exact right direction.
-- Alice Hoffman

#Running #Mean #Home

My darling girl, when are you going to realize that being normal is not necessarily a virtue? It rather denotes a lack of courage." - Aunt Frances
-- Alice Hoffman

#Girl #Aunt #Magic

Every problem has a solution, although it may not be the outcome that was originally hoped for or expected.
-- Alice Hoffman

#Inspirational #Life #May

They weren't true stories; they were better than that.
-- Alice Hoffman

#Stories #True Story

Real love, after all, was worth the price you paid, however briefly it might last.
-- Alice Hoffman

#Real #Real Love #Might

Anyway, the sort of love that will not wait is probably best to pass by
-- Alice Hoffman

#Waiting

Trouble is just like love, after all; it comes in unannounced and takes over before you've had a chance to reconsider, or even to think.
-- Alice Hoffman

#Thinking #Chance #Trouble

All the characters in my books are imagined, but all have a bit of who I am in them - much like the characters in your dreams are all formed by who you are
-- Alice Hoffman

#Dream #Book #Character

When I walk, I walk with you. Where I go, you're with me always.
-- Alice Hoffman

#Walks

They were written on cheap blue notebooks bought by poor women. I'm interested in folk tales in the way that medicine and magic in women's stories are all kind of combined.
-- Alice Hoffman

#Notebook #Eye #Blue

Pride is a funny thing; it can make what is truly worthless appear to be a treasure.
-- Alice Hoffman

#Pride #Funny Things #Treasure

This day is going to be awful. It's the sort of day you wouldn't mind losing completely, even if it meant your life would be twenty-four hours shorter.
-- Alice Hoffman

#Mind #Twenties #Would Be

No one knows you like a person with whom you've shared a childhood. No one will ever understand you in quite the same way.
-- Alice Hoffman

#Childhood #Way #Persons

There was the blue sky above her and all those many roses, the ones that gave off the scent of cloves in the rain and the ones that left a trace of lemon on your fingers, the ones that were the color of blood, and those that were as white as clouds. Each one was sweeter than the next and as red as gemstones.
-- Alice Hoffman

#Rain #Clouds #Blue

Others said May was best, that sweet green time when lilacs bloomed and gardens along Main Street were filled with sugary pink peonies and Dutch tulips.
-- Alice Hoffman

#Sweet #Garden #May

But what we are given is taken as well, so that we know God's glory comes to us from His will alone.
-- Alice Hoffman

#Taken #Glory #Given

My theory is that everyone at one time or another has been at the fringe of society in some way: an outcast in high school, a stranger in a foreign country, the best at something, the worst at something, the one who's different. Being an outsider is the one thing we all have in common.
-- Alice Hoffman

#Country #School #Diversity

Every fairy tale had a bloody lining. Every one had teeth and claws.
-- Alice Hoffman

#Teeth #Fairy Tale #Tales

Sometimes, running away means you're headed in the exact right direction.
-- Alice Hoffman

#Running #Mean #Sometimes

I always felt and still feel that fairy tales have an emotional truth that is so deep that there are few things that really rival them
-- Alice Hoffman

#Emotional #Rivals #Fairy Tale

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

#Writing #Novel

I have crossed over to a place where I never thought I’d be. I am someone I would have never imagined. A secret. A dream. I am this, body and soul. Burn me. Drown me. Tell me lies. I will still be who I am.
-- Alice Hoffman

#Dream #Lying #Who I Am

The sky is already purple; the first few stars have appeared, suddenly, as if someone had thrown a handful of silver across the edge of the world.
-- Alice Hoffman

#Stars #Sky #Purple

It was the sort of beauty you feel so deeply it becomes contagious and somehow makes you feel beautiful too.
-- Alice Hoffman

#Beautiful #Feeling Beautiful #Contagious

Once you know some things, you can't unknow them. It's a burden that can never be given away.
-- Alice Hoffman

#Burden #Given

There are some things, after all, that Sally Owens knows for certain: Always throw spilled salt over your left shoulder. Keep rosemary by your garden gate. Add pepper to your mashed potatoes. Plant roses and lavender, for luck. Fall in love whenever you can.
-- Alice Hoffman

#Falling In Love #Garden #Rose

The moon is always jealous of the heat of the day, just as the sun always longs for something dark and deep.
-- Alice Hoffman

#Inspirational #Life #Jealous

The weak are cruel. The strong have no need to be.
-- Alice Hoffman

#Strong #Needs #Weak

People hide their truest nature. I understood that; I even applauded it. What sort of world would it be if people bled all over the sidewalks, if they wept under trees, smacked whomever they despised, kissed strangers, revealed themselves?
-- Alice Hoffman

#People #Tree #World

Books may well be the only true magic.
-- Alice Hoffman

#Inspirational #Book #Reading

Here's the thing about luck...you don't know if it's good or bad until you have some perspective.
-- Alice Hoffman

#Good Luck #Perspective #Luck

Mothers always find ways to fit in the work - but then when you're working, you feel that you should be spending time with your children and then when you're with your children, you're thinking about working.
-- Alice Hoffman

#Mother #Children #Single Mom

You can be betrayed in your sleep. The whole world can tilt while you're dreaming of butterflies.
-- Alice Hoffman

#Dream #Butterfly #Sleep

That is how you know you've left childhood behind-when you wish for time to go backward.
-- Alice Hoffman

#Childhood #Wish #Behinds

It's not the lie that's the problem; it's the distance the lie forges between you.
-- Alice Hoffman

#Distance #Lying #Problem

Love is worth the sum of itself, and nothing more.
-- Alice Hoffman

#Love Is

If I hadn't learned my lesson, I would have wished we could stay there forever. But I knew better now. We'd seen what we'd come to see. The way to trick death. Breathe in. Breathe out. Watch as it all rises upwards, black and blue into the even bluer sky.
-- Alice Hoffman

#Blue #Sky #Forever

If every life is a river, then it's little wonder that we do not even notice the changes that occur until we are far out in the darkest sea. One day you look around and nothing is familiar, not even your own face. My name once meant daughter, grandaughter, friend, sister, beloved. Now those words mean only what their letters spell out; Star in the night sky. Truth in the darkness. I have crossed over to a place where I never thought I'd be. I am someone I would have never imagined. A secret. A dream. I am this, body and soul. Burn me. Drown me. Tell me lies. I will still be who I am.
-- Alice Hoffman

#Daughter #Dream #Stars

Holding a tear back makes them drain upward, higher and higher, until one day your head just explodes and you're left with a stub of a neck and nothing more.
-- Alice Hoffman

#Tears #One Day #Necks

I was beginning to understand.My grandmother's love was cold because she was afraid of things;that was why everything had to be perfect.
-- Alice Hoffman

#Grandmother #Perfect #Cold

You can never tell about a person by guessing...that's why language was invented. Otherwise, we'd all be like dogs, sniffing each other to find out where we stood.
-- Alice Hoffman

#Dog #Guessing #Language

What you dream, you can grow. Someone told me that, but I didn't believe it. I said I had nothing and that people with nothing are unable to dream. But I was wrong.
-- Alice Hoffman

#Dream #Believe #People

Be careful what you wish for. I know that for a fact. Wishes are brutal, unforgiving things. They burn your tongue the moment they're spoken and you can never take them back.
-- Alice Hoffman

#Wish #Tongue #Facts

He started to look at me in a manner I recognized: it was the way I looked at a new book, one I had never read before, one that surprised me with all it had to say.
-- Alice Hoffman

#Book #Looks #Way

Sometimes they would sit in the parlor together, both reading – in entirely separate worlds, to be sure, but joined somehow. When this happened, other people in the family couldn't bring themselves to disturb them. All that could be heard in the parlor was the sound of pages, turning.
-- Alice Hoffman

#Reading #People #Together

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

#Dream #Mean #Space

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

#Regret #Believe #People

In the darkest hour of winter, when the starlings had all flown away, Gretel Samuelson fell in love. It happened the way things are never supposed to happen in real life, like a sledgehammer, like a bolt from out of the blue. One minute she was a seventeen year-old senior in high school waiting for a Sicilian pizza to go; the next one she was someone whose whole world had exploded, leaving her adrift in the Milky Way, so far from earth she was walking on stars.
-- Alice Hoffman

#Senior #Stars #Real