Top 500 Alice Hoffman Quotes (2026 Update)
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301. “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

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

— Alice Hoffman

303. “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

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

— Alice Hoffman

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

— Alice Hoffman

306. “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

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

— Alice Hoffman

308. “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

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

— Alice Hoffman

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

— Alice Hoffman

Featured in: Real Quotes

311. “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

312. “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

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

— Alice Hoffman

314. “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

315. “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

316. “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

317. “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

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

— Alice Hoffman

319. “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

320. “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

321. “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

322. “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

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

— Alice Hoffman

324. “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

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

— Alice Hoffman

326. “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

327. “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

Featured in: Real Quotes

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

— Alice Hoffman

329. “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

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

— Alice Hoffman

331. “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

332. “Ironically, now that my children are older and gone quite a bit, I find it harder to work when they’re not around. Too much free time!”

— Alice Hoffman

333. “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

334. “I was so unaccustomed to such emotions it took some time before I realized I was happy.”

— Alice Hoffman

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

— Alice Hoffman

336. “Even with her failing vision, Violet West could see the scars. They had turned purple, almost red, from the icy cold, the color of the pears on the tree in the yard, the color of blood that can’t be washed away and of things that can never be undone.”

— Alice Hoffman

337. “It was November, that quiet, gray time of the year when you feel like holding someone’s hand. Gretel had her own hands clasped together, like a corpse.”

— Alice Hoffman

338. “He had appeared beside her because she had wanted him to. She had called him to her, and was calling him still. Even when she fell asleep, she dreamed of water, as if the world were topsy-turvy and everything she cared about had been lost in the deep. She plunged through the green waves with her eyes wide open, searching for the world as she’d known it, but that world no longer existed; everything that had once been solid was liquid now, and the birds swam alongside the fish.”

— Alice Hoffman

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

— Alice Hoffman

340. “Know what you want, and be sure of it, for regret gives birth to more regret and nothing more.”

— Alice Hoffman

341. “I also like the whole idea of fairy tales and folk tales being a woman’s domain, considered a lesser domain at the time they were told.”

— Alice Hoffman

342. “Real love was dangerous, it got you from inside and held on tight, and if you didn’t let go fast enough you might be willing to do anything for its sake.”

— Alice Hoffman

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

— Alice Hoffman

344. “She takes the fortune cookies from the bottom of the bag and throws them into a glass bowl she keeps in the closet. She has no desire to know what her future might hold.”

— Alice Hoffman

345. “She’s beginning to wonder if perhaps she’s haunting herself.”

— Alice Hoffman

346. “She, who prided herself on her tough exterior, could always be undone by the beauty of flight.”

— Alice Hoffman

347. “Then I understood that when someone begins to tell you her story, you are entwined together. Perhaps even more so if the ending hasn’t been divulged.”

— Alice Hoffman

348. “He started to look at me in a manner I recognized: it was the way I looked at a new book, one I had never read before, one that surprised me with all it had to say.”

— Alice Hoffman

Featured in: Book Quotes, Reading Quotes

349. “Is there more to the story?” Vincent asked. “There’s more to every story,” his aunt told him.”

— Alice Hoffman

350. “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