Alice Hoffman Quotes

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

I heard a sigh, as though the books were breathing. I felt that this was where I belonged. This was where I lived.

If we had paid attention, we would have understood there are some things in this world you cannot outrun.

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

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

This was what it meant to be human, to know that time moved and all things changed.

I always quit at three when my kids come home from school so I feel pretty spoiled

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.

What I like about fairy tales is the language and the matter-of-fact way of introducing magic, where it's accepted that a fox could talk or a gate could just appear in a wall. I think fairy tales are so psychological.

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.

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.

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.

Jill and I have known each other our whole lives. One house separates our houses but we act as if it doesn't exist. We met before we were born and we'll probably still know each other after we die. At least, that's the way we're planning it.

I also like the whole idea of fairy tales and folk tales being a woman's domain, considered a lesser domain at the time they were told.

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

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

I don't think I make much of a distinction between the 'real' and the 'fantastic.' They both seem to be threads in the same cloth as far as I'm concerned.

It was as if hope had appeared out of nowhere to settle beside her and it wasn't going anywhere, it wasn't going to desert her now.

He stepped off the pavement like a man jumping off a bridge, as calm as a swimmer with an ocean out below. Lucy had known what he was going to do the instant their eyes met. She'd know what he intended because she would have done the very same thing if she'd had his courage. Nothing was going to break his fall.

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

No barrier was strong enough to keep out the movement of time.

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

Among men and women, those in love do not always announce themselves with declarations and vows. But they are the ones who weep when you're gone. Who miss you every single night, especially when the sky is so deep and beautiful, and the ground so very cold.

Remember what I've told you. Remember me.

I loved him even now, as he took a knife to my throat, as I drowned in blood, as I whispered "Cousin, you were wrong. We were born to live.

Burn me. Drown me. Tell me lies. I will still be who I am.

Books may well be the only true magic.

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

That's why there are ten gates to pass through before you reach the garden. If life were easy there would be one gate. There would be no gates at all.

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!

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.

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.

Even in times when it's difficult to figure out, how do you go forward, art - and books - always help

What else is there to write about than love and loss?

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.

I read everything of Ray Bradbury when I was 12 or 13, and I think that's the most effective time to read Bradbury. He built such a moral world, where you have to make decisions and grow up.

What was a rose but the living proof of desire, the single best evidence of human longing and earthly devotion. but desire could be twisted,after all, and Jealousy was the name of the rose that did well in arid souls.

Only her death could prove her innocence; a circle of impossible, deathly judgement.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

He was in love, and people in that condition did stupid, unfathomable things. They were all flawed, every single one.

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

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

I wept to think that life went on even when so much had been lost, that rain still fell and myrtle grew between the rocks.