Alice Hoffman Quotes

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

“I can hurt myself more than anyone else can," she told her sister. "I can do it with my eyes closed.”

“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.”

“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.”

“You can be betrayed in your sleep. The whole world can tilt while you're dreaming of butterflies.”

“Those you love will not drown or burn. They will fly away.'…'Now we both have people we love who are like birds. They have flown far from anything in this world that can hurt them. They're flying away still.”

“Here is the riddle of love: Everything it gives to you, it takes away.”

“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.”

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

“Maybe some love was guaranteed. Maybe it fit inside you and around you like skin and bones.”

“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?”

“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.”

“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.”

“She liked to disappear, even when she was in the same room as other people. It was a talent, as it was a curse.”

“Are people drawn to each other because of the stories they carry inside?”

“Sometimes the right thing feels all wrong until it is over and done with.”

“Every time someone forgets, someone else disappears,' my brother wrote.”

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

“When I walk, I walk with you. Where I go, you're with me always.”

“Every fairy tale had a bloody lining. Every one had teeth and claws.”

“… he had a way of taking your hand which made it clear he'd have to be the one to let go."

From Alice Hoffman's "Local Girls", pg.102.”

“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.”

“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.”

“Just because something is unspoken doesn't mean that it disappears.”

“Pride is a funny thing; it can make what is truly worthless appear to be a treasure.”

“The weak are cruel. The strong have no need to be.”

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

“My grief was cold. It was nothing to share. It was nothing to speak about, nothing to feel.”

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

“I dream of a love that even time will lie down and be still for.”

“Here's the thing about luck… you don't know if it's good or bad until you have some perspective.”

“Still, she knows one thing for certain: never judge a relationship unless you are the one wrapped up in its arms.”

“Sometimes words drew blood, they cut your tongue, they made you know things you couldn't unknow.”

“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.”

“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.”

“That is the joy of reading fiction: when all is said and done, the novel belongs to the reader and his or her imagination.”

“Avoid men who call you Baby, and women who have no friends, and dogs that scratch at their bellies and refuse to lie down at your feet. Wear dark glasses; bathe with lavender oil and cool fresh water. Seek shelter from the sun at noon.”

“Some people say, 'Save yourself and you save your ways.' I say, 'Be yourself and you save your soul.”

“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.”

“Crying wasn't like riding a bike. Give it up, and you quickly forget how it's done.”

“I didn’t want to be prideful anymore. I wanted to be as hard as and brittle as the stones I carted into the woods. Stones that could not feel or cry or see. I wished not to feel anything at all.

In no time, what I wished for, I became.”

“I knew what it was to yearn for a life so distant it seemed that it had never been anything more than a dream.”

“Some things you cannot wish away or think away. They become part of you when you remember them.”

“Instead of going home, I drove to the library. To hell with human beings. I’d always felt safer with stories than with flesh and blood.”

“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.”

“She was disappearing a little more each day, so thin, so frail, a wisp of smoke. One day she would surely vanish altogether, and there was no way to stop her.”

“Being human means losing everything we love best in the world," she murmured as she released me. "But would you ask to be anything else?”

“You cannot dispute the ridiculous. You cannot argue reasonably with evil.”

“I'm at the point where going forward is easier than going back.”

“Love is worth the sum of itself, and nothing more.”

“She can feel his blood, just beneath his skin; when he breathes, the air fills with smoke. He's like a dragon, ancient and fearless.”

“What men yearn for they often destroy.”

“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.”

“It's not the lie that's the problem; it's the distance the lie forges between you.”

“(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.”

“We stood and watched as God abandoned us, and then we did the best we could.”

“Unfinished business always comes back to haunt you, and a man who swears he'll love you forever isn't finished with you until he's done.”

“Some stories stayed with you even when you wanted to forget them.”

“Some fates are guaranteed, no matter who tries to intervene.”

“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.”

“Outside, the September air was enticingly fragrant, yellow with pollen and rich, lemony sunlight.”

“Still anyone who trusts a serpent deserves its bite. The wise see a creature for what it is, not what it says it may be.”

“I must keep my head and not give in to desire, for desire is what causes women to drown.”

“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.”

“The best way to die is when your living”

“It was the sort of beauty you feel so deeply it becomes contagious and somehow makes you feel beautiful too.”