Top 500 Alice Hoffman Quotes (2024 Update)
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401. “Love has nothing to do with time or space.”

— Alice Hoffman

402. “In our world of shadows, there is no black and white but a thousand different strokes of light”.”

— Alice Hoffman

403. “I knew what happened in fairy tales. The strong survived while the weak were eaten alive.”

— Alice Hoffman

404. “He knew even at an early age of seven, how dangerous it was for someone like him to have hope. He knows how to have no expectations. He can completely control not just what he wants, but what he needs.”

— Alice Hoffman

405. “What she feels for him is so deep, she aches. She supposes this is what people refer to when they say the pangs of love, as if your innermost joy cannot help but cause you anguish as well.”

— Alice Hoffman

406. “Desire, if handled incorrectly, could become a curse.”

— Alice Hoffman

407. “That was how evil spoke. It made its own corrupt sense; it swore that the good were evil, and that evil had come to save mankind.”

— Alice Hoffman

408. “She had the feeling that if she went home, she might never get away. She thought of birds caught in nets. There was something inside her, beating against her ribs, urging her to do things she might not otherwise attempt. She had the strongest desire to get lost.”

— Alice Hoffman

409. “I wondered if all creatures were drawn to what was dangerous or if we merely wanted light at any cost and were willing to burn for our desires.”

— Alice Hoffman

410. “I believe in tragedy,” Shelby responds coldly. “Not miracles.”

— Alice Hoffman

411. “I never see a novel as a film while I’m writing it. Mostly because novels and films are so different, and I’m such an internal novelist.”

— Alice Hoffman

412. “There was a spark inside that holiest of holy places that made people want to possess it, and what men yearn for they often destroy.”

— Alice Hoffman

413. “Before she can stop herself, she thinks about desire, how it lives within you and yet is separate, surfacing when it chooses, without permission, in the harsh afternoon light, at the moment when you least expect to find it.”

— Alice Hoffman

414. “Even now as the graves of these women went untended, and their passings unmourned, the seeds they had scattered turned the hillsides red and orange from May to September. Some called the pirates’ bounty flame trees, but to us they were known as flamboyant trees, for no one could ignore their glorious blooms, with flowers that were larger than a man’s open hand. Every time I saw them I thought of these lost women. That was what happened if you waited for love.”

— Alice Hoffman

415. “Don’t make me sit through reality.”

— Alice Hoffman

416. “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. It was exactly like dreaming the same dream, then waking too soon and never finding out what had happened.”

— Alice Hoffman

417. “Let everyone see the blood,′ he said. ‘Don’t clean it up. That’s the only way people remember.’... I could see the blood inside my head. It was with me forever, whether or not I wanted to forget.”

— Alice Hoffman

418. “Like the rabbi with the red circle, she should have said “no” to everything. She should have become a raven. She didn’t understand that every word the judge said was a trap, in that every word she said could easily be a stone used to shut her into that trap.”

— Alice Hoffman

419. “My father had told me that no matter how comfortable we might feel, we must live like fish, unattached to any land. Wherever there was water, we would survive. Some fish could stay in the mud for months, even years, and when at last there was a high flooding tide, they would swim away, a dark flash, remembered only by their own kind. So perhaps the stories they told of our people were true: no net could hold us.”

— Alice Hoffman

420. “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

421. “Once you possess something others do not, you are a target for the wicked.”

— Alice Hoffman

422. “They believed all books should be read, for as long as the reader liked.”

— Alice Hoffman

423. “You want to know what love is? Its the thing that ruins you.”

— Alice Hoffman

424. “If she wanted to enter an otherworld, all she had to do was open a novel.”

— Alice Hoffman

425. “Let her wake as when she close her eyes. That was all Jenny asked for. That was all she begged for on this March night that was perfectly equal to the day, unique in all the season. Let her be the same sweet girl, unburdened by gifts or sorrow.”

— Alice Hoffman

426. “They had likely been together twenty times, an entire world created in just days.”

— Alice Hoffman

427. “If you took all the trouble most girls got into as teenagers and boiled it down for twenty-four hours, you’d wind up with something the size of a Snickers candy bar. But if you melted down all the trouble Gillian Owens got herself into, not to mention all the grief she caused, you’d have yourself a sticky mess as tall as the statehouse of Boston.”

— Alice Hoffman

428. “Love was the thing that tore you apart; it made you believe the lies you were told, obvious as they might be. It was nearly impossible to see your own fate while it was happening to you. It was only after, when what’s done had been done, that one’s vision cleared.”

— Alice Hoffman

429. “If you believed in something strongly and give it enough credence, it could appear right in front of you. Though it had been created in your mind, it would claim a presence in the real world, a monster at your door, a demon pulling at your coat sleeve.”

— Alice Hoffman

430. “Relatives can be tricky when you are undergoing treatment for a disease or are in the throes of any sort of tragedy. Some want to do too much, some too little. But some are just right. A pie left on your back porch is just right. A hug in the hallway. A book of poems sent through the mail.”

— Alice Hoffman

431. “Some creatures do not care how polite a person might be, they will hurt you for no reason, and then all you can do is heal yourself with whatever ingredients are necessary.”

— Alice Hoffman

432. “This was the virtue of the dark: you were who you had always been, only no one could see you.”

— Alice Hoffman

433. “She’d bought a blue notebook in the pharmacy to write down her aunt’s remedies. Star tulip to understand dreams, bee balm for a restful sleep, black mustard seed to repel nightmares, remedies that used essential oils of almond or apricot or myrrh from thorn trees in the desert. Two eggs, which must never be eaten, set under a bed to clean a tainted atmosphere. Vinegar as a cleansing bath. Garlic, salt, and rosemary, the ancient spell to cast away evil.”

— Alice Hoffman

434. “Maybe he understands that saying thank you can be just as hard as saying good-bye.”

— Alice Hoffman

435. “They say that dogs may dream, and when Topsy was old, his feet would move in his sleep. With his eyes closed he would often make a noise that sounded quite human, as if greeting someone in his dreams. At first it seemed that he believed Sara would return, but as the years went by I understood that his loyalty asked for no reward, and that love comes in unexpected forms. His wish was small, as hers had been – merely to be beside her. As for me, I already knew I would never get what I wanted.”

— Alice Hoffman

436. “When she reached 44 Greenwich Avenue she went inside alone, and only the crow knew that it was possible for a woman to claim to have no heart at all and still cry as though her heart would break.”

— Alice Hoffman

437. “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

438. “All this kissing was making her crazy; it was reminding her of what she could feel, and how it could be when you wanted someone as much as he wanted you.”

— Alice Hoffman

439. “Perhaps in the cold my heart would freeze and I would care nothing for those I was forced to abandon.”

— Alice Hoffman

440. “The place where what someone needs and what she desires cross each other to become one.”

— Alice Hoffman

441. “Likely it was true that the flaws you saw in other women you didn’t notice in yourself.”

— Alice Hoffman

442. “In the dark morning light, her gray eyes look completely green, as though they belonged to a cat that can see in the dark.”

— Alice Hoffman

443. “And what of monsters? Can they love too? We know quite well they can. For we know that they do.”

— Alice Hoffman

444. “She kissed him first, and all the rest followed.”

— Alice Hoffman

445. “That’s still the best reading experience: falling in love with a book I meet by accident.”

— Alice Hoffman

446. “People expected certain things of me: assistance, silence, comfort. They had no idea who I was.”

— Alice Hoffman

447. “He realized how little he knew of this world, but he knew this: If you could love someone, you possessed a soul.”

— Alice Hoffman

448. “But I was not a mouse. In the fields where I walked, I was much more interested in the actions of the hawks.”

— Alice Hoffman

449. “He wondered why it was only when you were at the end of your life that it was possible to view it with honesty and truth.”

— Alice Hoffman

450. “You walk into the dark and the darkness abides within you.”

— Alice Hoffman