Quotes from Alice Hoffman

They were beautiful shells, as white as the surf in the sea. When you held one up to your ear you could hear the sound of your best friend talking to you, even if she was a thousand miles away.

They didn't understand why a brave, independent woman had been so brutally treated. Many of them began to wonder why they themselves often feigned opinions rather than speak their minds, no matter how clever they were, for fear they'd be thought of as difficult.

In the last few months, she'd had a lot of time to consider the state of mankind, and she'd decided that people actually had very few choices in their lives. Most things happened to you. Most things rolled right over you and then kept on going.

Things without all remedy should be without regard

Hard times make for simple minds

But then you like to tempt fate, don't you? Don't worry, it will all work out

There he is, in the fading light, certain of what he wants, certain of her. If Gillian were speaking to her sister, or more correctly, if Sally were speaking to her, Gillian would draw her over to the window to get a look. Isn't he beautiful? That's what she would have said if she and Sally had been talking. I wish I deserved him, she would have whispered into her sister's ear.

My father was both a scientist and a magician, but he declared that it was in literature wherein we discovered our truest natures.

Once I knew nothing about McKay and now I knew everything about him. This seemed as good as any reason for not walking out the door. There are so many ways to stop the knowing, and I tried them all. I tried silence, I tried heroin, I tried calling it love. And then I stopped trying to call my dumbness any one of ten thousand names.

This was the virtue of the dark: you were who you had always been, only no one could see you.

A book doesn't live when it's written. It lives when it's read.

a man always revealed his own inner story in his actions and expressions. A man's past deeds foretold his future and allowed anyone with half a brain to divine the path he would take.

He knew even at an early age of seven, how dangerous it was for someone like him to have hope. He knows how to have no expectations. He can completely control not just what he wants, but what he needs

It was clear from the start that they were not like other children, therefore Susanna felt she had no choice but to set down rules. No walking in the moonlight, no Ouija boards, no candles, no red shoes, no wearing black, no going shoeless, no amulets, no night-blooming flowers, no reading novels about magic, no cats, no crows, and no venturing below Fourteenth Street. Yet no matter how Susanna tried to enforce these rules, the children continued to thwart her.

I should have begun to worry then, for as fortune comes to you, so does it slip away.

I thought perhaps I had been wrong, too quick to judge the essence of a being by its appearance, still not fully understanding that, in the world God has given us, all things must change.

But maybe a broken heart seemed a simple price to pay, the way that all costs that must be settled in the future appear, until they suddenly come due.

In the dining hall of the home, Stella had seen so much death, that one Saturday morning she'd been compelled to sink down onto the linoleum floor, overwhelmed not so much by the sorrow of it all, but by the human dignity, the almost supernatural ability to face the abyss and still order scrambled eggs and toast for breakfast.

I knelt by the fire to make certain there were no burning embers left. That was when I spied the tracks of a lion. There were only a few such beasts left in the desert, but one had come here, answering my call. He had been there all the while, watching over me, before he left me at last.

Isabel remembered what books had meant to her so long ago, and she suddenly had a longing for all those fictional worlds that had helped her through the worst years of her life.

They learned that sometimes the most dangerous thing of all in matters of live was to be granted your heart's desire.

In my memories I have set my life in Brooklyn between pieces of glass, separate from my current existence, and this has enabled me to move forward. The past cannot tie me in knots, nor can it cause me to drown. And yet what is stored in glass belongs to me still. Each piece is a part of me: the hummingbirds, the locked doors, Mr. Morris in the yard, the pear tree, the woman covered by bees, and you. Especially you.

No one called out my name. Finally, I went to open the door. I could smell burning metal.

He thought about how love could move you in ways you wouldn't have imagined, one foot in front of the other, even when you thought you had nothing left inside.