Top 500 Alice Hoffman Quotes (2026 Update)
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251. “I’m fated to lose everyone I ever love,” April said. “I already know that.” “Of course you are,” Jet responded in her calm, measured tone. “That’s what it means to be alive.”

— Alice Hoffman

252. “The truth was written upon us, as they say men’s sins are written on their bones so that when they die their wicked deeds can be read as if written upon parchment.”

— Alice Hoffman

253. “There is the outside of a story, and the inside of a story... One is the fruit and may be delicious, but the other is the seed.”

— Alice Hoffman

254. “She had wanted to be a bird, but now she knew, as she looked out the window to see Lewis following, that even birds are chained to earth by their needs and desires.”

— Alice Hoffman

255. “What is broken can also be mended.”

— Alice Hoffman

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

— Alice Hoffman

257. “After living with his art in my own chamber, I saw there was more than mere mimicry, and that art was a world unto itself, with its own symbols and language. A leaf seen in a certain light might be gray or violet as well as purple, and a latticework of twigs might easily turn red as the sky paled above the city.”

— Alice Hoffman

258. “The best way to die is when your living.”

— Alice Hoffman

259. “A lifetime is a lifetime whether it lasts one night or a hundred years.”

— Alice Hoffman

260. “The lonelier you are, the more you pull away, until humans seem an alien race, with customs and a language you can’t begin to understand.”

— Alice Hoffman

261. “But children can tell when love has been lost, they know when silence means peace and when it’s a sign of despair.”

— Alice Hoffman

262. “Some people know the exact moment when they’ve lost everything. They can look back and see it plain as day and for the life of them they can’t understand why they didn’t spot the situation as it was happening.”

— Alice Hoffman

263. “Life is beautiful, just very unfair.”

— Alice Hoffman

264. “The most basic and reliable love potion was made from anise, rosemary, honey, and cloves boiled for nine hours on the back burner of the old stove.”

— Alice Hoffman

265. “Sometimes movies really are the best medicine.”

— Alice Hoffman

266. “That was how evil spoke. It made its own corrupt sense; it swore that the good were evil, and that evil had come to save mankind. It brought up ancient fears and scattered them on the street like pearls.”

— Alice Hoffman

267. “Each morning when I arrive, the doves know me; their song rises and falls with pleasure and acceptance. It is always there, a river of sound.”

— Alice Hoffman

268. “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.”

— Alice Hoffman

269. “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

270. “The garden was burning, the air sparked with specks of flame as they say it will be in the World-to-Come when we walk beside the angels and have no fear of their illuminations or of their might.”

— Alice Hoffman

271. “You never know what you want or need until you are old, for old age is a mystery that is impossible to unwind until you step into its maze.”

— Alice Hoffman

272. “My expectations of what I wanted in a man I learned from a dog: loyalty and kindness.”

— Alice Hoffman

273. “I didn’t understand that when I closed myself to her, I took a part of her bitterness inside me. It was green and unforgiving, and as it grew it made me more like her. It gave me my strength, but it gave me my weakness as well.”

— Alice Hoffman

274. “She wondered if dreamers knew they were in a dream while it was happening, or if they had no idea that everything around them was purely imagined until the dream had gone.”

— Alice Hoffman

275. “He carried so much suffering that it radiated out in waves. Sorrow is like that: whenever a person runs, it comes after him; it leaves an endless trail of pain.”

— Alice Hoffman

276. “All things change, for that is the way of the world we walk through.”

— Alice Hoffman

277. “You rescue something and you’re responsible for it. But maybe that’s what love is. Maybe it’s like a hit-and-run accident; it smashes you before you can think. You do it no matter the cost and you keep on running.”

— Alice Hoffman

278. “It had been better to have viewed him from a distance, so that his flaws were left unseen.”

— Alice Hoffman

279. “That was the way illness appeared in a house, in the corners, in between floorboards, on the hooks in the closet, along with the sweaters and coats.”

— Alice Hoffman

280. “Love is the one thing that’s not easy to find. It’s an achievement, Eddie, to feel such a glorious emotion, whether it’s returned or not. Some men never do.”

— Alice Hoffman

281. “Nowadays, she doesn’t even look in a mirror. She’s afraid no one will be staring back at her.”

— Alice Hoffman

282. “You don’t need wealth to appreciate something beautiful.”

— Alice Hoffman

283. “If a woman is in trouble, she should always wear blue for protection.”

— Alice Hoffman

284. “For some, witchery was a choice, but not for them.”

— Alice Hoffman

285. “But the best stories were about their mother, how her hair was as red as blood, how she had seventy-four freckles on her face, how she was a ferryboat captain’s daughter who believed that people could fly.”

— Alice Hoffman

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

— Alice Hoffman

Featured in: Strong Quotes

287. “Our mother had taught us that when the moon was white, reappearing after its absence, it was showing us that what had been hidden could easily become whole again.”

— Alice Hoffman

288. “He believed in dreams, in endings that people told you could never happen, in disappointments reversed and luck that lasted.”

— Alice Hoffman

289. “Who but a fool would stay in one place and butt her head against the same window time and again?”

— Alice Hoffman

290. “Vincent gave him the twenty. “You don’t think you might be looking for trouble?” Levi thanked Vincent for the loan, but laughed at the question. “Life is trouble, brother. You’ve got to fight for what you want.”

— Alice Hoffman

291. “I take responsibility for the man I used to be, for I carry him with me. As strong as I am, he’s a heavy burden.”

— Alice Hoffman

292. “The day had begun, cool and clear and absolutely impossible to avoid.”

— Alice Hoffman

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

— Alice Hoffman

294. “I wrote to find beauty and purpose, to know that love is possible and lasting and real, to see day lilies and swimming pools, loyalty and devotion, even though my eyes were closed, and all that surrounded me was a darkened room. I wrote because that was who I was at the core, and if I was too damaged to walk around the block, I was lucky all the same. Once I got to my desk, once I started writing, I still believed anything was possible.”

— Alice Hoffman

295. “Lightning, like love, is never ruled by logic.”

— Alice Hoffman

296. “Fairytales were maps formed of blood and hair and bones; they were the knots of the sub-conscious unwound. Every word in every tale was real and as true as apples and stones. They all led to the story inside the story.”

— Alice Hoffman

Featured in: Real Quotes

297. “Her gift with wild birds allowed her to bring them to her merely by lifting her hand. From a distance, when she ran so fast she was nearly flying, it seemed as if she spoke their language, and was meant for their world more than her own.”

— Alice Hoffman

298. “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.”

— Alice Hoffman

Featured in: Real Quotes

299. “She thought she could have what she wanted; she thought she could see the world from above, as if it were a distant blue ball whose sorrows had nothing to do with her. She had wanted to be a bird, but now she knew, as she looked out the window to see Lewis following, that even birds are chained to earth by their needs and desires.”

— Alice Hoffman

300. “As Gary understands it, the greatest portion of grief is the one you dish out for yourself, and he and Sally have both served themselves from the same table tonight, the only difference being that he knows what he’s missing, and she has no idea what is causing her to cry as she drives down the Turnpike.”

— Alice Hoffman