Top 500 Alice Hoffman Quotes (2024 Update)
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351. “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

352. “She shuffled her feet as she was told that she had been taken in by the family as an infant, and that every family in town without a daughter adopted a girl infant or child. She was raised to inherit the laundry and the housekeeping, the cooking and the sorrow, and the kindling of the fire in the early morning when no one else would even think of getting out from beneath the mountains of blankets and quilts.”

— Alice Hoffman

353. “I had never felt so alive as when reading.”

— Alice Hoffman

354. “They didn’t understand why a brave, independent woman had been so brutally treated. Many of them began to wonder why they themselves often feigned opinions rather than speak their minds, no matter how clever they were, for fear they’d be thought of as difficult.”

— Alice Hoffman

355. “I felt I had come upon the core of the meaning of life, to discover and re-create beauty.”

— Alice Hoffman

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

— Alice Hoffman

357. “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

358. “But Sally didn’t have the heart to fight back. She wore dark clothes and tried not to be noticed. She pretended she wasn’t smart and never raised her hand in class. She disguised her own nature so well that after a while she grew uncertain of her own abilities.”

— Alice Hoffman

359. “They learned that sometimes the most dangerous thing of all in matters of live was to be granted your heart’s desire.”

— Alice Hoffman

360. “I thought perhaps I had been wrong, too quick to judge the essence of a being by its appearance, still not fully understanding that, in the world God has given us, all things must change.”

— Alice Hoffman

361. “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

362. “It was a small ceremony at the town hall, and they didn’t exchange wedding rings, but they kissed for so long at the counter in the hall of records that they were asked to leave.”

— Alice Hoffman

363. “To want someone so much could be a terrible thing, or it could be the best hope a man could have.”

— Alice Hoffman

364. “They may be nothing like you, he had written, they may surprise you, they may even repel you when their behavior is out of control, when they climb out their windows and drink underage and break every rule, but you will love them in a way you had not thought possible before, no matter who they turn out to be.”

— Alice Hoffman

365. “Desire had a way of making a person oddly courageous.”

— Alice Hoffman

366. “What had she thought, that love was a toy, something easy and sweet, just to play with? 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

367. “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

368. “I wasn’t quite as certain that I knew her soul. When it came right down to it, I wasn’t sure she knew me either.”

— Alice Hoffman

369. “Everyone should know exactly what everyone else is thinking and then people wouldn’t hurt each other so much.”

— Alice Hoffman

370. “You cannot unwrite a death that has been written.”

— Alice Hoffman

371. “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

372. “She read the color-coded series of Andrew Lang’s fairy tales to her mother. They became lost in an enchanted cottage with vines growing over the window. It was dark and it was quiet and they could hear each other softly breathing. Every story had the same message: what was deep inside could only be deciphered by someone who understood how easily a heart could be broken.”

— Alice Hoffman

373. “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

374. “Franny entwined her legs with his. She understood why ancient monsters were often made of two creatures, with two hearts and minds. There was strength in such a combination of opposites.”

— Alice Hoffman

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

— Alice Hoffman

376. “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

377. “She had lost some of who she was when she lost her beloved.”

— Alice Hoffman

378. “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

379. “Women pitied her, but went on their way; they had their own troubles to attend to, and mercy was a scarce commodity.”

— Alice Hoffman

380. “When a star reaches for you, it is difficult to look away.”

— Alice Hoffman

381. “When you truly love someone and they love you in return, you ruin your lives together.”

— Alice Hoffman

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

— Alice Hoffman

383. “Feelings are best left concealed. They can bite you if you’re not careful. They can eat you alive.”

— Alice Hoffman

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

— Alice Hoffman

385. “The children on the playground all heard her. They took off running together, as far away as possible from Antonia Owens, who might hex you if you did her wrong, and from her aunts, who might boil up garden toads and slip them into your stew, and from her mother, who was so angry and protective she might just freeze you in time, ensuring that you were forever trapped on the green grass at the age of ten or eleven.”

— Alice Hoffman

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

— Alice Hoffman

387. “You were the one who taught me that love was never what we expected it to be and that it was all that we needed.”

— Alice Hoffman

388. “Night and Day, they called them, and although neither girl laughed at this little joke or found it amusing in the least, they recognized the truth in it, and were able to understand, earlier than most sisters, that the moon is always jealous of the heat of the day, just as the sun always longs for something dark and deep.”

— Alice Hoffman

389. “We grew careless, as people who are lost often do.”

— Alice Hoffman

390. “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

391. “She thinks of the way angels arrive, when you lease expect them, when the road is dark, when you’re bleeding and alone and hopeless, when you’re sleeping in a basement, convinced that no one knows you’re there.”

— Alice Hoffman

392. “In Berlin evil came to them slowly and then all at once.”

— Alice Hoffman

393. “Somehow, what they’d had was already over, and she hadn’t even been aware of the end. This happened with roses: it was possible to take them for granted all summer as they wound along fences and gates, and then in September, when they faded, how beautiful they’d once been suddenly took hold. That was when people began to yearn for them, and all winter long they’d watch the bare branches for buds, vowing that this time they’d be grateful for all that they had.”

— Alice Hoffman

394. “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

395. “Perhaps that was what my mother disliked most. I resembled her. I could not help but wonder if for some women, that was the worst sin of all.”

— Alice Hoffman

396. “But love was not about practice or preparation, it was pure chance; if you took your time with it you ran the risk of having it evaporate before it had even begun.”

— Alice Hoffman

397. “If you tried to right all the wrongs in the world you’d exhaust yourself in under an hour.”

— Alice Hoffman

398. “Women were hurt every day and kept the cause to themselves.”

— Alice Hoffman

399. “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

400. “She said she wanted a man like that, someone who understood sorrow, not someone who caused it.”

— Alice Hoffman