Quotes from Alice Hoffman

She had been grief stricken as her father lay dying but now she felt weightless, the way people do when they're no longer sure they have a reason to be connected to this world. The slightest breeze could have carried her away, into the night sky, across the universe.

For love changes everything and forces us into lives we never imagined we might lead

She's beginning to wonder if perhaps she's haunting herself.

Books may well be the only true magic

The sisters were glad to be together. They had the easy sort of relationship where they didn't have to speak to be understood.

Love ambushed you, it lay in wait, dormant for days or years. It was the red thread, the peach stone, the kiss, the forgiveness. It came after you, it escaped you, it was invisible, it was everything.

You never know what you want or need until you are old, for old age is a mystery that is impossible to unwind until you step into its maze.

They carried what was holy within them, for every man was a temple, and every prayer spoken could be heard by our Father above us.

Abra DeMadrigal didn't look young enough to be my sister anymore. Her sorrow weighed her down and aged her. She was still beautiful, but she looked very far away. No wonder our people had raven eyes, so distant, so sad. No matter how wise she was, my mother looked like a woman who hadn't truely believed how much evil there was in our world. Not until this moment.

Love more, her aunt had said. Not less.

It was always best to step into the future while it was still waiting for you.

A lifetime is a lifetime whether it lasts one night or a hundred years.

It's not easy. It never is. That is the secret our parents fail to tell us, out of kindness and love, but it's a secret we need to know. Everything that begins, ends. Everything beautiful disappears.

Sally...can no longer think of love as a reality, or even as a possibility, however remote.

When people related by blood were so careful with each other, when they were so very polite, there was soon nothing left to say. Only niceties that meant so little they might as well have been spoken to a complete stranger. Pass the butter, open the door, see you after school, there's rain again, it's sunny, it's cold. Has the dog eaten? Has the window been shut? Where are you going? Why is it I don't know you at all? Such statements did not add up to anything like a family...

what does love matter in a world where it's so easy to hurt someone?

Although I am no longer caught in the past, the future seems like a ridiculous thing to me. Try to catch it, hold it in your hand. It disappears every time.

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.

Weapons are kept from women, but such a naming suggests that perhaps men fear our talents in war as well as our desire for peace.

Desire, if handled incorrectly, could become a curse.

What did you see?' he asked then. Nothing,' I told him. 'Because nothing is what you wanted me to see, though the man on the table might disagree.

That was the way love was, invisible, there whether or not you wanted to see it or admit to it.

If a woman is in trouble, she should always wear blue for protection.

a time that is is neither day nor night, when the veil of illusion is thinner and we can see things in the lilac-tinged light that cannot be spied at any other hour