Quotes from Alice Hoffman

She had wanted to be a bird, but now she knew, as she looked out the window to see Lewis following, that even birds are chained to earth by their needs and desires.

I never once stopped to consider that what you are given can also be taken away.

She wishes nightmares were all that kept her awake. She cannot tell which disturbs here more, the future or the past.

When you have lost your mother you have lost the world.

This was what it was. The ruin of it. The depth of it. Have it once and you can have it again. That's the riddle. That's the truth.

You feel your heart and bones and blood. You wait for him like a bird in a cage.

The music of your youth stays with you and winds itself around your heart. I hear one chord of Strawberry Fields Forever or Satisfaction and am instantly back in time. It doesn't matter where I am, suddenly I'm walking through the woods, I'm in my best friend's room ...

That just goes to show that you never can tell about a person by guessing, Frances informs her niece. That's why language was invented. Otherwise, we'd all be like dogs, sniffing each other to find out where we stood.

She, who prided herself on her tough exterior, could always be undone by the beauty of flight.

what was a rose but the living proof of desire, the single best evidence of human longing and earthly devotion. but desire could be twisted,after all, and Jealousy was the name of the rose that did well in arid souls.

Life all happened so quickly; people tell you it will, but you won't believe it until it happens to you. Cry all you want, being young will slip through your hands and you will be left standing there, you who were once so young, not recognizing yourself or your life.

In no time the perennial borders were thick with rosy-pink foxglove and cream-colored lilies, each of which hung like a pendant, collecting dew on its satiny petals.

Love like this wasn't what he'd planned or wanted or expected, surely it was indeed a trap, for even when you tried to run away, it followed you through the grass and lay down beside you, it overtook common sense and willpower.

a man has many lives. Each day we chose the path we would take by our own actions... the past was what we carried with us, threaded to the future, and we decided whether to keep it close or let it go. Fate was both what we were give and what we made for ourselves.

make you want things you hadn't even known existed.

As for me, sleep was a country I no longer visited, despite my incantation. When I did, I wished for my waking life, the hours when I didn't see the nightmare images of all that had happened and all I had become.

The wickedness of the world was a part of creation, I knew this, and the Angel of Death had been created on that day when life first appeared, yet i was embittered, I wept for what i had lost and what the world had lost and would yet lose again.

I want the difficult stories, the ones that aren't easy to believe, the twisted ones, the sorrowful ones, the ones that need telling most of all.

even though she felt a wave of dread. If they knew she was nervous, she'd be at their mercy. But if they thought she was ice they'd be afraid to touch her.

My expectations of what I wanted in a man I learned from a dog: loyalty and kindness.

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.

Do people choose the art that inspires them — do they think it over, decide they might prefer the fabulous to the real? For me, it was those early readings of fairy tales that made me who I was as a reader and, later on, as a storyteller.

If you believed in something strongly and give it enough credence, it could appear right in front of you. Though it had been created in your mind, it would claim a presence in the real world, a monster at your door, a demon pulling at your coat sleeve.

I understood that fate could not be eluded forever; it came on leathery wings, swooping through the darkness like the bats in the orchards.