Alice Hoffman
32 quotes
Biography
"Books may well be the only true magic."
"Sometimes the right thing feels all wrong until it is over and done with."
"There are some things, after all, that Sally Owens knows for certain: Always throw spilled salt over your left shoulder. Keep rosemary by your garden gate. Add pepper to your mashed potatoes. Plant roses and lavender, for luck. Fall in love whenever you can."
"When I walk, I walk with you. Where I go, you're with me always."
"...he had a way of taking your hand which made it clear he'd have to be the one to let go."From Alice Hoffman's "Local Girls", pg.102."
"When all is said and done, the weather and love are the two elements about which one can never be sure."
"Do you ever just put your arms out and just spin and spin and spin? Well, that's what love is like; everything inside of you tells you to stop before you fall, but for some reason you just keep going."
"Pride is a funny thing; it can make what is truly worthless appear to be a treasure."
"Unrequited love is so boring. Weeping under a blue-black sky is for suckers or maniacs."
"Still, she knows one thing for certain: never judge a relationship unless you are the one wrapped up in its arms."
"Sometimes they would sit in the parlor together, both reading – in entirely separate worlds, to be sure, but joined somehow. When this happened, other people in the family couldn't bring themselves to disturb them. All that could be heard in the parlor was the sound of pages, turning."
"He started to look at me in a manner I recognized: it was the way I looked at a new book, one I had never read before, one that surprised me with all it had to say."
"All the characters in my books are imagined, but all have a bit of who I am in them - much like the characters in your dreams are all formed by who you are."
"I feel more influenced in my own work by dreams than I do by other writers' works in a way. Or by popular culture, movies - what else is there to write about than love and loss?"
"Mothers always find ways to fit in the work - but then when you're working, you feel that you should be spending time with your children and then when you're with your children, you're thinking about working."
"I think growing up is difficult and it's a process that I'm always interested in, with kids and adults, they are often on two different universes."
"Mothers always find ways to fit in the work - but then when you're working, you feel that you should be spending time with your children and then when you're with your children, you're thinking about working."
"I wrote to find beauty and purpose, to know that love is possible and lasting and real, to see day lilies and swimming pools, loyalty and devotion, even though my eyes were closed, and all that surrounded me was a darkened room. I wrote because that was who I was at the core, and if I was too damaged to walk around the block, I was lucky all the same. Once I got to my desk, once I started writing, I still believed anything was possible."
"I do not know if he had a name, but I called him North, an appellation I think Beck would have approved of, for it was the name the Dutch called the Hudson River when they first came here, when men set to changing the world in their image, and gave all the wild things their own names."
"Love was never a mistake,even when it wasn't returned."
"I'm trying to find someone who doesn't want to be found.""That can be as hard as looking for a shadow."
"He was withdrawing. I think it was getting harder for him to accept his fate. Like a bird in a cage, he grew silent."
"James had a theory about caged birds, one he hoped to prove when he became a scientist someday. He believed that all birds that had their freedom taken from them eventually lost their voices. Once that happened, they could never find their true song."
"I head a bitterness that hadn't been there before. Something was changing inside him. He'd had enough of following the rules."
"It's still horrible to wish the worst on anyone. I'm sure she had her reasons. Maybe people hurt her feelings, the same way I was hurt. A single word can feel like a rock being thrown at you."