Top 500 Alice Hoffman Quotes (2025 Update)
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401. “I knew what happened in fairy tales. The strong survived while the weak were eaten alive.”

— Alice Hoffman

402. “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

403. “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

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

— Alice Hoffman

405. “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

406. “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

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

— Alice Hoffman

408. “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

409. “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

410. “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

411. “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

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

— Alice Hoffman

413. “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

414. “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

415. “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

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

— Alice Hoffman

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

— Alice Hoffman

418. “Finding your soul mate is like coming home to a house where everything is familiar. You can walk in the dark and know where everything is.”

— Alice Hoffman

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

— Alice Hoffman

420. “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

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

— Alice Hoffman

422. “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

423. “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

424. “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

425. “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

426. “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

427. “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

428. “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

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

— Alice Hoffman

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

— Alice Hoffman

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

— Alice Hoffman

432. “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

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

— Alice Hoffman

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

— 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. “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

437. “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

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

— Alice Hoffman

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

— Alice Hoffman

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

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

— Alice Hoffman

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

— Alice Hoffman

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

— Alice Hoffman

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

— Alice Hoffman

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

— Alice Hoffman

447. “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

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

— Alice Hoffman

449. “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

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

— Alice Hoffman