Top 500 Alice Hoffman Quotes (2024 Update)
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251. “In my memories I have set my life in Brooklyn between pieces of glass, separate from my current existence, and this has enabled me to move forward. The past cannot tie me in knots, nor can it cause me to drown. And yet what is stored in glass belongs to me still. Each piece is a part of me: the hummingbirds, the locked doors, Mr. Morris in the yard, the pear tree, the woman covered by bees, and you. Especially you.”

— Alice Hoffman

252. “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

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

— Alice Hoffman

254. “When you were young you were afraid of ghosts, and when you were aged you called them to you.”

— Alice Hoffman

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

— Alice Hoffman

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

— Alice Hoffman

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

— Alice Hoffman

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

— Alice Hoffman

259. “Butter melting on a dish meant someone nearby was in love, and a bird in the house take your bad luck out the window.”

— Alice Hoffman

260. “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

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

— Alice Hoffman

262. “Lately, she’s been wondering if perhaps when the living become the dead they leave an empty space behind, a hollow no one else can fill.”

— Alice Hoffman

263. “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

264. “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

265. “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

266. “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

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

— Alice Hoffman

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

— Alice Hoffman

269. “Don’t waste time when there’s someone you love.”

— Alice Hoffman

270. “You lose people sometimes, you know. You don’t expect to, but then it happens and you can’t get them back.”

— Alice Hoffman

271. “Never look at other people’s bad fortune,′ my mother said. ‘If you do, it will come back to find you instead of its rightful owner.”

— Alice Hoffman

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

— Alice Hoffman

273. “It was believed that all creation came from thought, language, and mathematics.”

— Alice Hoffman

274. “Sometimes words spoken are the ones you’ve been afraid to think, but once they’re said aloud there’s no way to make them disappear.”

— Alice Hoffman

275. “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

276. “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

277. “Truth felt light and green, but a lie sunk to the floor, heavy as metal, a substance she always avoided for it made her feel as though she was trapped behind bars.”

— Alice Hoffman

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

— Alice Hoffman

279. “In a world of sorrow, love was an act of will. All you needed were the right ingredients.”

— Alice Hoffman

280. “My father told us that our people had been slaves in the desert and because God had seen fit to set us free, none among us should ever own another man. It had been written that every man belonged to God and no one else. But did women belong to God or to the men of their family? They could not own property or businesses; only their husbands could have that honor.”

— Alice Hoffman

281. “We never know the end of the story until we get there.”

— Alice Hoffman

282. “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

283. “Hochman had been right, the past was what we carried with us, threaded to the future, and we decided whether to keep it close or let it go. Fate was both what we were given and what we made for ourselves.”

— Alice Hoffman

284. “I think of life as a book of stories. You move through the stories and the characters change. But once you have a name on your skin you are stuck with one story, even if it’s a bad one.”

— Alice Hoffman

285. “Men and women rarely speak to each other, though they often talk.”

— Alice Hoffman

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

— Alice Hoffman

287. “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

288. “I only had access to him when we were together in the library, and I loved them both -the library and my father- equally and without question.”

— Alice Hoffman

289. “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

290. “He thought about how love could move you in ways you wouldn’t have imagined, one foot in front of the other, even when you thought you had nothing left inside.”

— Alice Hoffman

291. “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.”

— Alice Hoffman

292. “Listen, and you’ll hear a story being told, one you may need to know.”

— Alice Hoffman

293. “He has stumbled into love, and now he’s stuck there. He’s fairly used to not getting what he wants, and he’s dealt with it, yet he can’t help but wonder if that’s only because he didn’t want anything too badly.”

— Alice Hoffman

294. “If we had no hurt and no sin to speak of, we’d be angels, and amgels can’t love the way men and women do.”

— Alice Hoffman

295. “You rescue something and you’re responsible for it. But maybe that’s what love is.”

— Alice Hoffman

296. “He is gone and all we have is this world, here and now.”

— Alice Hoffman

297. “To love someone so complicated you had to be committed to a single emotion – the way you loved him – no matter what. In that way, it was indeed simple.”

— Alice Hoffman

298. “It was a warm and breezy day, too warm for Sally’s heavy clothes, so she draped her coat over her arm. The sun went through the fabric of her dress, a hot hand across flesh and bones. Sally felt as though she’d been dead and now that she was back she was particularly sensitive to the world of the living: the touch of the wind against her skin, the gnats in the air, the scent of mud and new leaves, the sweetness of blues and greens.”

— Alice Hoffman

299. “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

300. “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.”

— Alice Hoffman