Top 500 Alice Hoffman Quotes (2024 Update)
Page 7 of 10

301. “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

302. “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

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

— Alice Hoffman

304. “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

305. “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

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

— Alice Hoffman

307. “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

308. “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

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

— Alice Hoffman

310. “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

311. “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

312. “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

313. “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

314. “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

315. “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

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

— 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. “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

319. “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

320. “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

321. “Hearts were made for being broken. There’s really no way around it if you want to be a human being.”

— Alice Hoffman

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

— Alice Hoffman

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

— Alice Hoffman

324. “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

325. “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

326. “When Juliet came flying down the hallway, Stella didn’t recognize her friend. Juliet hadn’t bothered with makeup; she was wearing a nightgown underneath her raincoat and had on plastic flip-flops. This was the way loved walked in, barely dressed, confused, panic-stricken, overcome, not caring what anyone thought or what they believed.”

— Alice Hoffman

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

— Alice Hoffman

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

— Alice Hoffman

329. “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

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

— Alice Hoffman

331. “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

332. “Believers with nothing to believe in.”

— Alice Hoffman

333. “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

334. “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

335. “You couldn’t see love, or touch it, or taste it, yet it could destroy you and leave you in the dark, chasing after your own destiny.”

— Alice Hoffman

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

— Alice Hoffman

337. “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

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

— Alice Hoffman

339. “Some things are best remembered the way you want to remember them, like this road, these stars, this girl right beside him as they walk into the center of the cold night, looking straight ahead.”

— Alice Hoffman

340. “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

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

— Alice Hoffman

342. “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

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

— Alice Hoffman

344. “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

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

— Alice Hoffman

346. “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

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

— Alice Hoffman

348. “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

349. “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

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

— Alice Hoffman