Top 500 Alice Hoffman Quotes (2026 Update)
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251. “It’s for your own good,” she said tenderly. “All I want for you is a normal life.” “Mother,” Franny sighed. “What makes you think that’s what I want?”

— Alice Hoffman

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

— Alice Hoffman

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

— Alice Hoffman

254. “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

255. “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

256. “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

257. “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

258. “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

259. “Maria Owens did what she did for a reason. She was young and she thought damning anyone who loved us would protect us. But what she had with that terrible man wasn’t love. She didn’t understand that when you truly love someone and they love you in return, you ruin your lives together. That is not a curse, it’s what life is, my girl. We all come to ruin, we turn to dust, but whom we love is the thing that lasts.”

— Alice Hoffman

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

— Alice Hoffman

261. “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

262. “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

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

— Alice Hoffman

264. “In good time every secret must be shared and every miracle called into question.”

— Alice Hoffman

265. “I saw the end of his life right there in that single moment. His pride, his decency, his secrets, his death.”

— Alice Hoffman

266. “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

267. “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

268. “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

269. “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

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

— Alice Hoffman

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

— Alice Hoffman

272. “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

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

— Alice Hoffman

274. “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

275. “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

276. “Finding your soul mate is like coming home to a house where everything is familiar. You can walk in the dark and know where everything is.”

— Alice Hoffman

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

— Alice Hoffman

278. “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

279. “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

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

— Alice Hoffman

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

— Alice Hoffman

282. “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

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

— Alice Hoffman

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

— Alice Hoffman

285. “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

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

— Alice Hoffman

287. “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

288. “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

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

— Alice Hoffman

290. “Then let us be among those who hope that the future will be less cruel than the past.”

— Alice Hoffman

291. “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

292. “I understood wanting to forget. Things that made you remember cut like pieces of glass.”

— Alice Hoffman

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

— Alice Hoffman

294. “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.”

— Alice Hoffman

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

— Alice Hoffman

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

— Alice Hoffman

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

— Alice Hoffman

298. “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

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

— Alice Hoffman

Featured in: Strong Quotes

300. “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