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

302. “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

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

— Alice Hoffman

Featured in: Strong Quotes

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

— Alice Hoffman

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

— Alice Hoffman

306. “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

307. “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

308. “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

309. “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

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

— Alice Hoffman

311. “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

312. “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

313. “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

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

— Alice Hoffman

315. “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

316. “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

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. “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

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

— 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

Featured in: Real Quotes

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

— Alice Hoffman

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

— Alice Hoffman

Featured in: Real Quotes

332. “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

333. “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

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

— Alice Hoffman

335. “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

336. “At first it appeared as if something with wings had fallen from above... perhaps an angel who had faltered then drowned, in tears of this poor tired world.”

— Alice Hoffman

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

— Alice Hoffman

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

— Alice Hoffman

339. “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

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

— Alice Hoffman

341. “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

342. “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

343. “Believers with nothing to believe in.”

— Alice Hoffman

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

— Alice Hoffman

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

— Alice Hoffman

346. “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

347. “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

348. “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

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

— Alice Hoffman

350. “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