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

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

— Alice Hoffman

403. “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

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

— Alice Hoffman

405. “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

406. “Everything we knew condemned us, and our questioning condemned us most of all. Knowledge was the way of our people, and knowledge was dangerous. It was the first thing that freed you and the thing that put you in peril. It was the key to the ten gates. I saw them clearly now, each and every one, the gates that were there for me. Ashes, Bones, Grass, Heart, Stone, Love, Sorrow, Blood, Earth, Sky.”

— Alice Hoffman

407. “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

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

— Alice Hoffman

409. “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

410. “Love has nothing to do with time or space.”

— Alice Hoffman

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

— Alice Hoffman

412. “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

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

— Alice Hoffman

414. “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

415. “Children would beg for a peppermint drop each time he walked into town, and they’d follow behind, asking for a second and a third. When he died suddenly, while working late at his office, every boy and girl in the village reported smelling mint in the night air, as if somehing sweet had passed them right by.”

— Alice Hoffman

416. “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

417. “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

418. “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

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

— Alice Hoffman

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

— Alice Hoffman

421. “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

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

— Alice Hoffman

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

— Alice Hoffman

424. “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

425. “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

426. “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

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

— Alice Hoffman

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

— Alice Hoffman

429. “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

430. “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

431. “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

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

— Alice Hoffman

433. “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

434. “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

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

— Alice Hoffman

436. “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

437. “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

438. “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

439. “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

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

— Alice Hoffman

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

— Alice Hoffman

442. “I had never before noticed that rain contained every color within itself, green as the fields, blue as heaven, white as a lamb, yellow as my daughter’s hair.”

— Alice Hoffman

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

— Alice Hoffman

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

— Alice Hoffman

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

— Alice Hoffman

446. “I’d thrown my fate away once, and I would never again allow other people’s opinions rule my life. As a girl I’d done what was necessary, but I was a girl no longer. Adelle.”

— Alice Hoffman

447. “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

448. “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

449. “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

450. “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