Alice Hoffman citations

Page 2

“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.”

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

“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?”

“Still, I couldn't help but wonder if it was a mistake for people like us to be tied to a place. If we weren't meant to be ready and willing to wander. If everything we needed was contained in who we were.
And what we remember.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”