Alice Hoffman Quotes

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

Love was like that, like a dream you didn't quite understand, one in which you didn't necessarily know what you were looking at until it was right in front of you.

My mother's blood that would last forever after. The blood of my brother, my grandfather, my father.

How could I have been so stupid to ignore everything I’d had in my life? The color red alone was worth kingdoms.

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.

Love was like rain: it turned into ice, or it disappeared. Now you saw it, now you couldn't find it no matter how hard you might search. Love evaporated; obsession was realer; it hurt, like a pin in your bottom, a stone in your shoe. It didn't go away in the blink of an eye. A morning phone call filled with regret. A letter that said, Dear you, good-bye from me. Obsession tasted like something familiar. Something you'd known your whole life. It settled and lurked; it stayed with you.

This kind of knowing you can never tell to anyone. If you want us to survive, you cannot trust a soul'... 'Not for any reason on this earth. You can never tell.

Being an outsider is the one thing we all have in common.

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.

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.

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

Every time I finish a book, I forget everything I learned writing it - the information just disappears out of my head

Let everyone see the blood,' he said. 'Don't clean it up. That's the only way people remember.'... I could see the blood inside my head. It was with me forever, whether or not I wanted to forget.

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.

I wasn't quite as certain that I knew her soul. When it came right down to it, I wasn't sure she knew me either.

Everything we knew condemned us, and our questioning condemned us most of all. Knowledge was the way of our people, and knowledge was dangerous. It was the first thing that freed you and the thing that put you in peril. It was the key to the ten gates. I saw them clearly now, each and every one, the gates that were there for me. Ashes, Bones, Grass, Heart, Stone, Love, Sorrow, Blood, Earth, Sky.

I can't really work on more than one thing at a time

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

She knows where she's going, and what she has to do. She could, after all, find her way to Route 95 South blindfolded. She could do it in the dark, in fair weather or foul; she can do it even when it seems she will run out of gas. 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.

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

Good fortune can take forever to get to you, but as it turns out, sorrow is as quick as a shot.

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.

My sorrow is I used to read all the time and now, as a writer, I don't have the time to read.

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

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

Our house was littered with books- in the kitchen, under the beds, stuck between the couch pillows--far too many for her the ever finish. I suppose I thought if my grandmother kept up her interests, she wouldn't die; she'd have to stay around to finish the books she was so fond of. "I've got to get to the bottom of this one," she'd say, as if a book were no different from a pond or a lake. I thought she'd go on reading forever but it didn't work out that way.

When I read Jerome D. Salinger's "The Catcher in the Rye" that was the first time I felt my mind blow open. I thought that book was speaking to me. I was 12 or 13 when I read that. I read everything on my mother's bookshelves.

He'd thought he was lost, but now he recognized that eternity was around him, like salt from a shaker or stars in the sky.

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.

The frightened walk away when love is difficult. I know that now. You have to be willing to give everything away. You have to be willing to end up with nothing. Only then will your heart be whole.

Unrequited love is so boring. Weeping under a blue-black sky is for suckers or maniacs.

Jill told me that when you're really in love, you know right away. I'm not exactly sure how this happens. Is it like a flash of lightning? Like an angel tapping you on the shoulder? Or is it similar to choosing a puppy? You think you're picking the cutest one, but really you wind up going home with the one who keeps insisting on climbing into your lap.

I wrote to find beauty and purpose, to know that love is possible and lasting and real.... Once I got to my desk, once I started writing, I still believed anything was possible.

After a while, the characters I'm writing begin to feel real to me. That's when I know I'm heading in the right direction

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

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?

When I write for teens, I feel I can cut through everything and get to the bare bones. I can get straight into the emotional world of the character.

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

I think growing up is difficult and it's a process that I'm always interested in, with kids and adults, they are often on two different universes.

That was the way love was, invisible, there whether or not you wanted to see it or admit to it.

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.

I know who you are in your heart,' Andres said. 'That's all that matters.' And that was it. That was the moment. Now I knew how I would feel if I ever lost him. That was how you knew love. My mother had told me that. All you had to do was imagine your life without the other person, and if the thought alone made you shiver, then you knew.

Women know things that men will never know. We keep the best secrets. We tell the best stories.