Top 500 Alice Hoffman Quotes (2026 Update)
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401. “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

402. “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

403. “You know who you are. And I suggest you never deny it.”

— Alice Hoffman

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

— Alice Hoffman

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

— Alice Hoffman

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

— Alice Hoffman

407. “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

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

— Alice Hoffman

410. “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

411. “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

Featured in: Romance Quotes

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

— Alice Hoffman

413. “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

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

— Alice Hoffman

415. “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

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

— Alice Hoffman

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

— Alice Hoffman

418. “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

419. “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

420. “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

421. “Just know that what’s done can be undone, but what’s undone can never again be.”

— Alice Hoffman

422. “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

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

— Alice Hoffman

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

— Alice Hoffman

425. “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

426. “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

427. “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

428. “I started to feel as though I were disappearing. Perhaps I myself was figment of my own imagination, a storm cloud, a wisp of smoke, a burning ember.”

— Alice Hoffman

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

— Alice Hoffman

430. “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

431. “I had been blind to the pain of others until I had my own burden to carry.”

— Alice Hoffman

432. “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

433. “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

434. “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

435. “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

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

— Alice Hoffman

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

— Alice Hoffman

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

— Alice Hoffman

439. “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

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

— Alice Hoffman

441. “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

442. “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

443. “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

444. “Life was beautiful, everyone knew that, but it was also bitter and bleak and unfair as hell and where did that leave a person? On the outs with the rest of the world. Someone who sat alone in the cafeteria, reading, escaping from his hometown simply by turning the page.”

— Alice Hoffman

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

— Alice Hoffman

446. “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

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

— Alice Hoffman

448. “I’m sticking with books. They never let you down and they don’t judge you.”

— Alice Hoffman

449. “In two weeks a man could completely refashion his history; he could walk all the way to Ohio or Iowa, change his name and his accent, disappear into another life. In the woods, footprints faded, the wind rose up to disperse of clothing, flesh became grass.”

— Alice Hoffman

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

— Alice Hoffman