Quotes from Alice Hoffman

Things without all remedy should be without regard. But what you can cure, do so willingly.

If we had no hurt and no sin to speak of, we'd be angels, and amgels can't love the way men and women do.

The truth was written upon us, as they say men's sins are written on their bones so that when they die their wicked deeds can be read as if written upon parchment.

He still wanted to believe that people could survive their misfortunes. He believed that was all anyone had.

There is no fiercer enemy than a word. A word that can be written down in pages and punctuated by quotation marks and commas and spelled out in contracts and poems and sighs, in old whispers and song lyrics, in promises and vows.

Well, maybe that's what love is, as state of mind ready to grace anyone willing to accept it. Anyone who cares.

I did my best to pretend it wasn't so. ... I didn't have time to be ill. Now I know you can't run away by ignoring the truth. Truth follows you; it comes in through open windows and drifts under doors.

We must do as we're told, Ava reminded her. We will honor your mother and follow her instructions. Because she is your maker? Lea asked, her heart breaking. Ava shook her head. Because she is yours.

Time wasn't the same anymore. Doors were slamming shut before we even knew they'd been opened. Good fortune can take forever to get to you, but as it turns out, sorrow is as quick as a shot.

Unable are the Loved to die, for Love is Immortality," Jet said, quoting Emily Dickinson.

I wonder how a lioness will manage in a dovecote. Can you put away your teeth and claws?

For six months I did what women do: I waited. This is what women are taught to be good at. It's said that a woman's life is merely preparation for the primal nine-month wait. Whatever the reason, they do it well. Sometimes they drink or bite their fingernails down to the wrist. They count stars and initials and wait: for something to happen, for something to pass, to change, to begin, to end.

WITCHES TAKE THEIR NAMES FROM PLACES, for places are what give them their strength. The place need not be beautiful, or habitable, or even green. Sand and salt, so much the better. Scrub pine, plumberry, and brambles, better still. From every bitter thing, after all, something hardy will surely grow. From every difficulty, the seed that's sewn is that much stronger. Ruin is the milk all witches must drink; it's the lesson they learn and the diet they're fed upon.

Fate could twist you around and around if you weren't careful. Just when you thought you knew where you were headed, you'd wind up in the opposite direction, or flattened against a wall.

She has an eye for tragedy and sorrow.

you must be yourself no matter what; anything else was a lie, and a denial of who you were would always cause grief. What you put out into the world came back to you threefold. If you could not accept yourself, you would be reviled and cast out, adrift in the world.

She was remembering everything. How love could change a person, how it could cause you the greatest sorrow or shelter you from harm.

Be grateful if you have walked through the world with another's heart in your hand.

Goodness, in their opinion, was not a virtue but merely spinelessness and fear disguised as humility.

All that will ever be has already been written long before it happens. There is nothing we can do to stop it.

roses) each one shivering with cool silver light.

But in battle you cannot tell another when it is his time to enter the World-to-Come, nor is it possible to keep any man in this world when he wishes to leave it behind.

She kept a stack of books near the tub so she could read in the bath, even though the edges of the pages turned moldy. She read on trains and on buses, which often made her late as she was forever missing her stop.

Franny whispered to Haylin all that she ever was and had been. She told him that she had always known what the future would be, and he said that if what she said was true, then she should have known a very long time ago that this was meant to be.