Top 500 Alice Hoffman Quotes (2026 Update)
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301. “He believed in dreams, in endings that people told you could never happen, in disappointments reversed and luck that lasted.”

— Alice Hoffman

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

— Alice Hoffman

303. “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

304. “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

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

— Alice Hoffman

306. “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

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

— Alice Hoffman

308. “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

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

— Alice Hoffman

310. “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

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311. “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

312. “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

313. “As I turned the pages, I felt as if there were bees on my fingertips, for I had never felt so alive as when reading.”

— Alice Hoffman

314. “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

315. “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

316. “No one knows how to write a novel until it’s been written.”

— Alice Hoffman

317. “If she doesn’t make a move soon, they’re all going to pass her by and she’ll still be a child, afraid to leave her room, afraid to grow up.”

— Alice Hoffman

318. “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

319. “Isn’t that what love makes you do? Go on trying even when you’re through. Go on even when you’re made of ash, when there’s nothing left inside you but the past?”

— Alice Hoffman

320. “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

321. “Love someone and they’re yours forever, no matter how much time intervenes, that’s what Margaret Grey knew. The sky will always be blue; the wind will always rise up across the meadow and thread its way through the grass.”

— Alice Hoffman

322. “Things without all remedy should be without regard. But what you can cure, do so willingly.”

— Alice Hoffman

323. “Weapons are kept from women, but such a naming suggests that perhaps men fear our talents in war as well as our desire for peace.”

— Alice Hoffman

324. “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

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

— Alice Hoffman

326. “The aunts always kept their promises, and they still do. They believe that every problem has a solution, although it may not be the outcome that was originally hoped for or expected.”

— Alice Hoffman

327. “Love had to happen without any certainty, the ultimate leap of faith.”

— Alice Hoffman

328. “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

329. “Life is a mystery, and it should be so, for the sorrow that accompanies being human and the choices one will have to make are a burden, too heavy for most to know before their time comes.”

— Alice Hoffman

330. “There are those who say that heaven and hell are not so far apart. They are not at opposite ends of the world beyond ours, only a step away from one another.”

— Alice Hoffman

331. “She doesn’t have a mother anymore. There’s no one to whom she’s the most important person in the world.”

— Alice Hoffman

332. “Because we were Russian, sadness came naturally to us. But so did reading. In my family, a book was a life raft.”

— Alice Hoffman

333. “Real love, after all, was worth the price you paid, however briefly it might last.”

— Alice Hoffman

Featured in: Real Quotes

334. “I’m glad it all happened,” he says, “Even the bad parts.”

— Alice Hoffman

335. “I can’t really work on more than one thing at a time.”

— Alice Hoffman

336. “Stone should last forever, but on that night I came to understand that a stone was only another form of dust. Streams of holy dust loomed in the air, and every breath included remnants of the Temple, so that we inhaled that which was meant to stand through eternity.”

— Alice Hoffman

337. “This was the way love walked in, barely dressed, confused, panic-stricken, overcome, not caring what anyone thought or what they believed.”

— Alice Hoffman

338. “Some stories begin at the beginning and others begin at the end, but all the best stories begin in a library.”

— Alice Hoffman

339. “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

340. “She wishes he would come to her tonight, climb in through the window to lie down beside her and explain how it’s possible to love someone so much and still manage to carry on when you have to let them go.”

— Alice Hoffman

341. “People really could be one way outside, when inside they were torn to shreds, a fine white powder of grief and regret replacing blood and bones, and no one even noticed.”

— Alice Hoffman

342. “Believers with nothing to believe in.”

— Alice Hoffman

343. “Love wasn’t rational; there was no proof that it even existed outside of people’s imaginings.”

— Alice Hoffman

344. “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.”

— Alice Hoffman

345. “He carries books everywhere he goes so he won’t have to be bored by people.”

— Alice Hoffman

346. “Love like this wasn’t what he’d planned or wanted or expected, surely it was indeed a trap, for even when you tried to run away, it followed you through the grass and lay down beside you, it overtook common sense and willpower.”

— Alice Hoffman

347. “I had heard it said that Malachi wrote so beautifully the angels came to watch, for words were the first thing God created out of the silence and were still the most beautiful of His creations.”

— Alice Hoffman

348. “I don’t really read as much as I used to. A lot of what I was looking for as an escape I find in writing. And the other thing is that I don’t want to get into someone else’s language when I’m working.”

— Alice Hoffman

349. “A boy who is trouble is something entirely different as a man.”

— Alice Hoffman

350. “My father was both a scientist and a magician, but he declared that it was in literature wherein we discovered our truest natures.”

— Alice Hoffman