Alice Hoffman Quotes

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.

My darling girl, when are you going to realize that being normal is not necessarily a virtue? It rather denotes a lack of courage." - Aunt Frances

It doesn't matter what people tell you. It doesn't matter what they might say. Sometimes you have to leave home. Sometimes, running away means you're headed in the exact right direction.

The moon is always jealous of the heat of the day, just as the sun always longs for something dark and deep.

When I walk, I walk with you. Where I go, you're with me always.

Every fairy tale had a bloody lining. Every one had teeth and claws.

Trouble is just like love, after all; it comes in unannounced and takes over before you've had a chance to reconsider, or even to think.

People hide their truest nature. I understood that; I even applauded it. What sort of world would it be if people bled all over the sidewalks, if they wept under trees, smacked whomever they despised, kissed strangers, revealed themselves?

...he had a way of taking your hand which made it clear he'd have to be the one to let go.

When all is said and done, the weather and love are the two elements about which one can never be sure.

I dream of a love that even time will lie down and be still for.

Pride is a funny thing; it can make what is truly worthless appear to be a treasure.

Be careful what you wish for. I know that for a fact. Wishes are brutal, unforgiving things. They burn your tongue the moment they're spoken and you can never take them back.

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.

Just because something is unspoken doesn't mean that it disappears.

Unrequited love is so boring. Weeping under a blue-black sky is for suckers or maniacs.

Some things, when they change, never do return to the way they once were. Butterflies for instance, and women who've been in love with the wrong man too often.

Every problem has a solution, although it may not be the outcome that was originally hoped for or expected.

The weak are cruel. The strong have no need to be.

You can be betrayed in your sleep. The whole world can tilt while you're dreaming of butterflies.

Here is the riddle of love: Everything it gives to you, it takes away.

Once you know some things, you can't unknow them. It's a burden that can never be given away.

My grief was cold. It was nothing to share. It was nothing to speak about, nothing to feel.

Here's the thing about luck...you don't know if it's good or bad until you have some perspective.

No one knows you like a person with whom you've shared a childhood. No one will ever understand you in quite the same way.

The sky is already purple; the first few stars have appeared, suddenly, as if someone had thrown a handful of silver across the edge of the world.

Still, she knows one thing for certain: never judge a relationship unless you are the one wrapped up in its arms.

Sometimes words drew blood, they cut your tongue, they made you know things you couldn't unknow.

Other people’s judgments were meaningless unless you allowed them to mean something.

In losing a friend, she is reminded of all she has lost and all she stands to lose again. There is nothing to be done to make it any easier. We all grieve alone.

Know that the only remedy for love is to love more.

I knew what it was to yearn for a life so distant it seemed that it had never been anything more than a dream.

If every life is a river, then it's little wonder that we do not even notice the changes that occur until we are far out in the darkest sea. One day you look around and nothing is familiar, not even your own face. My name once meant daughter, grandaughter, friend, sister, beloved. Now those words mean only what their letters spell out; Star in the night sky. Truth in the darkness. I have crossed over to a place where I never thought I'd be. I am someone I would have never imagined. A secret. A dream. I am this, body and soul. Burn me. Drown me. Tell me lies. I will still be who I am.

Avoid men who call you Baby, and women who have no friends, and dogs that scratch at their bellies and refuse to lie down at your feet. Wear dark glasses; bathe with lavender oil and cool fresh water. Seek shelter from the sun at noon.

That is the joy of reading fiction: when all is said and done, the novel belongs to the reader and his or her imagination.

Do as you will, but harm no one. What you give will be returned to you threefold. Fall in love whenever you can.

She was disappearing a little more each day, so thin, so frail, a wisp of smoke. One day she would surely vanish altogether, and there was no way to stop her.

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.

Instead of going home, I drove to the library. To hell with human beings. I’d always felt safer with stories than with flesh and blood.

Some people say, 'Save yourself and you save your ways.' I say, 'Be yourself and you save your soul.

Crying wasn't like riding a bike. Give it up, and you quickly forget how it's done.

Holding a tear back makes them drain upward, higher and higher, until one day your head just explodes and you're left with a stub of a neck and nothing more.

Some things you cannot wish away or think away. They become part of you when you remember them.

Being human means losing everything we love best in the world," she murmured as she released me. "But would you ask to be anything else?

Are people drawn to each other because of the stories they carry inside?

Love is worth the sum of itself, and nothing more.

Some fates are guaranteed, no matter who tries to intervene.

You build your world around someone, and then what happens when he disappears? Where do you go- into pieces, into atoms, into the arms of another man? You go shopping, you cook dinner, you work odd hours, you make love to someone else on June nights. But you're not really there, you're someplace else where there is blue sky and a road you don't recognize. If you squint your eyes, you think you see him, in the shadows, beyond the trees. You always imagine that you see him, but he's never there. It's only his spirit, that's what's there beneath the bed when you kiss your husband, there when you send your daughter off to school. It's in your coffee cup, your bathwater, your tears. Unfinished business always comes back to haunt you, and a man who swears he'll love you forever isn't finished with you until he's done.

You cannot dispute the ridiculous. You cannot argue reasonably with evil.

What men yearn for they often destroy.

I'm at the point where going forward is easier than going back.

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.

She can feel his blood, just beneath his skin; when he breathes, the air fills with smoke. He's like a dragon, ancient and fearless.

Life is a mystery, and it should be so, for the sorrow that accompanies being human and the choices one will have to make are a burden, too heavy for most to know before their time comes.

I’m fated to lose everyone I ever love,” April said. “I already know that.” “Of course you are,” Jet responded in her calm, measured tone. “That’s what it means to be alive.

You can never tell about a person by guessing...that's why language was invented. Otherwise, we'd all be like dogs, sniffing each other to find out where we stood.

Still anyone who trusts a serpent deserves its bite. The wise see a creature for what it is, not what it says it may be.

Even as a small child, I understood that woman had secrets, and that some of these were only to be told to daughters. In this way we were bound together for eternity.

(Love) walks up to you,and when it does, you need to recognize it for what it is and, perhaps more important, for what it might become.

We stood and watched as God abandoned us, and then we did the best we could.

That is how you know you've left childhood behind-when you wish for time to go backward.

Outside, the September air was enticingly fragrant, yellow with pollen and rich, lemony sunlight.

Whoever knows you when you are young can look inside you and see the person you once were, and maybe still are at certain times.

She liked to disappear, even when she was in the same room as other people. It was a talent, as it was a curse.

Feel lucky for what you have when you have it. Isn't that the point? Happily ever after doesn't mean happy forever. The ever after, what precisely was that? Your dreams, your life, your death, your everything. Was it the blank space that went on without us? The forever after we were gone?

I didn’t want to be prideful anymore. I wanted to be as hard as and brittle as the stones I carted into the woods. Stones that could not feel or cry or see. I wished not to feel anything at all. In no time, what I wished for, I became.

Writing itself was a magical act in which imagination altered reality and gave form to power.

It's not the lie that's the problem; it's the distance the lie forges between you.

This is how you begin in this world. These are the lessons to be learned. Drink chamomile tea to calm the spirit. Feed a cold and starve a fever. Read as many books as you can. Always choose courage. Never watch another woman burn. Know that love is the only answer.

People want to ignore what they can't understand. They're looking for logic at any cost.

Still, I couldn't help but wonder if it was a mistake for people like us to be tied to a place. If we weren't meant to be ready and willing to wander. If everything we needed was contained in who we were. And what we remember.

Unfinished business always comes back to haunt you, and a man who swears he'll love you forever isn't finished with you until he's done.

Always keep mint on your windowsill in August, to ensure that buzzing flies will stay outside, where they belong. Don't think the summer is over, even when roses droop and turn brown and the stars shift position in the sky. Never presume August is a safe or reliable time of the year.

when you truly love someone and they love you in return, you ruin your lives together. That is not a curse, it’s what life is, my girl. We all come to ruin, we turn to dust, but whom we love is the thing that lasts.

Some stories stayed with you even when you wanted to forget them.

You are only worthy of what you prove yourself to be.

I just do the best I can to face what life brings. That’s the secret, you know. That’s the way you change your fate.

I must keep my head and not give in to desire, for desire is what causes women to drown.

If you are loved, you never lose the person who loved you. You carry them with you all your life.

I have crossed over to a place where I never thought I’d be. I am someone I would have never imagined. A secret. A dream. I am this, body and soul. Burn me. Drown me. Tell me lies. I will still be who I am.

Anything whole can be broken,” Isabelle told her. “And anything broken can be put back together again. That is the meaning of Abracadabra. I create what I speak.

The best way to die is when you're living.

I know who you are in your heart,' Andres said. 'That's all that matters.' And that was it. That was the moment. Now I knew how I would feel if I ever lost him. That was how you knew love. My mother had told me that. All you had to do was imagine your life without the other person, and if the thought alone made you shiver, then you knew.

It was the sort of beauty you feel so deeply it becomes contagious and somehow makes you feel beautiful too.

Maybe some love was guaranteed. Maybe it fit inside you and around you like skin and bones.

It had made her too helpless, because that's what love did. There was no way around it and no way to fight it. Now if she lost, she lost everything.

I can hurt myself more than anyone else can," she told her sister. "I can do it with my eyes closed.

It's not finding what's lost, it's understanding what you've found.

But most important of all, she explained that it was all right to say 'No. I disagree.' That was a gift. I understood it was power. The power to think my own thoughts. The power to believe in myself.

Those you love will not drown or burn. They will fly away.' ...'Now we both have people we love who are like birds. They have flown far from anything in this world that can hurt them. They're flying away still.

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.

Jill told me that when you're really in love, you know right away. I'm not exactly sure how this happens. Is it like a flash of lightning? Like an angel tapping you on the shoulder? Or is it similar to choosing a puppy? You think you're picking the cutest one, but really you wind up going home with the one who keeps insisting on climbing into your lap.

Young Sally Owens: He will hear my call a mile away. He will whistle my favorite song. He can ride a pony backwards. Young Gillian Owens: What are you doing? Young Sally Owens: Summoning up a true love spell called Amas Veritas. He can flip pancakes in the air. He'll be marvelously kind. And his favorite shape will be a star. And he'll have one green eye and one blue. Young Gillian Owens: Thought you never wanted to fall in love. Young Sally Owens: That's the point. The guy I dreamed of doesn't exist. And if he doesn't exist I'll never die of a broken heart.

Among men and women, those in love do not always announce themselves with declarations and vows. But they are the ones who weep when you’re gone. Who miss you every single night, especially when the sky is so deep and beautiful, and the ground so very cold.

We had to survive to remember. Otherwise everything we were would disappear. Those people we loved would fade as though we'd never loved them, as if they'd never walked and talked and burned, forgetting them was the real evil. That was the hole of darkness.

When the cold comes to New England it arrives in sheets of sleet and ice. In December, the wind wraps itself around bare trees and twists in between husbands and wives asleep in their beds. It shakes the shingles from the roofs and sifts through cracks in the plaster. The only green things left are the holly bushes and the old boxwood hedges in the village, and these are often painted white with snow. Chipmunks and weasels come to nest in basements and barns; owls find their way into attics. At night,the dark is blue and bluer still, as sapphire of night.

What's the difference between love and obsession? Didn't both make you stay up all night, wandering the streets, a victim of your own imagination, your own heartbeat? Didn't you fall into both, headfirst into quicksand? Wasn't every man in love a fool and every woman a slave? Love was like rain: it turned to ice, or it disappeared. Now you saw it, now you couldn't find it no matter how hard you might search. Love evaporated; obsession was realer; it hurt, like a pin in your bottom, a stone in your shoe. It didn't go away in the blink of an eye. A morning phone call filled with regret. A letter that said, 'Dear you, good-bye from me'. Obsession tasted like something familiar. Something you'd known your whole life. It settled and lurked; it stayed with you.

The moon is always jealous of the heat of the day, just as the sun always longs for something dark and deep. They could see how love might control you, from your head to your toes, not to mention every single part of you in between. A woman could want a man so much she might vomit in the kitchen sink or cry so fiercly blood would form in the corners of her eyes. She put her hand to her throat as though someone were strangling her, but really she was choking on all that love she thought she’d needed so badly. 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 it’s sake. She refused to believe in superstition, she wouldn’t; yet it was claiming her. Some fates are guaranteed, no matter who tries to intervene. After all I’ve done for you is lodged somewhere in her brain, and far worse, it’s in her heart as well. She was bad luck, ill-fated and unfortunate as the plague. She is not worth his devotion. She wishes he would evaporate into thin air. Maybe then she wouldn’t have this feeling deep inside, a feeling she can deny all she wants, but that won’t stop it from being desire. Love is worth the sum of itself and nothing more. But that’s what happens when you’re a liar, especially when you’re telling the worst of these lies to yourself. He has stumbled into love, and now he’s stuck there. He’s fairly used to not getting what he wants, and he’s dealt with it, yet he can’t help but wonder if that’s only because he didn’t want anything so badly. It’s music, it’s a sound that is absurdly beautiful in his mouth, but she won’t pay attention. She knows from the time she spent on the back stairs of the aunts’ house that most things men say are lies. Don’t listen, she tells herself. None if it’s true and none of it matters, because he’s whispering that he’s been looking for her forever. She can’t believe it. She can’t listen to anything he tells her and she certainly can’t think, because if she did she might just think she’d better stop. What good would it do her to get involved with someone like him? She’d have to feel so much, and she’s not that kind. The greatest portion of grief is the one you dish out for yourself. She preferred cats to human beings and turned down every offer from the men who fell in love with her. They told her how sticks and stones could break bones, but taunting and name-calling were only for fools. — & now here she is, all used up. Although she’d never believe it, those lines in *’s face are the most beautiful part about her. They reveal what she’s gone through and what she’s survived and who exactly she is, deep inside. She’s gotten back some of what she’s lost. Attraction, she now understands, is a state of mind. If there’s one thing * is now certain of, it’s house you can amaze yourself by the things you’re willing to do. You really don’t know? That heart-attack thing you’ve been having? It’s love, that’s what it feels like. She knows now that when you don’t lose yourself in the bargain, you find you have double the love you started with, and that’s one recipe that can’t be tampered with. 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.