Quotes from Alice Hoffman

Perhaps that was what my mother disliked most. I resembled her. I could not help but wonder if for some women, that was the worst sin of all.

In our world of shadows, there is no black and white but a thousand different strokes of light.

It was after dark when the woods were most filled with magic, when there were fireflies and the mist was rising from the streams.

Certainly, as a reader, I had always discovered the deepest truths in fiction; it was through reading novels that I learned about the world, a world not only of fact but of imagination and emotion.

He carried so much suffering that it radiated out in waves. Sorrow is like that: whenever a person runs, it comes after him; it leaves an endless trail of pain.

Let my burden be your burden, and yours be mine.

This was true magic, the making and unmaking of the world with paper and ink.

Never Get Lost Oatmeal Cookies, great for hikes or adventures. Orange You Glad Cake, an orange loaf with buttercream icing, certain to cheer up the day. Sin No More Cinnamon Rolls, delicious and sticky, good for both the well behaved and the unruly.

Cleaning up after themselves was a low priority for Margo and my mother. They had both recovered from cancer scares, failed marriages, and lost hope; in their opinion, dirt could wait.

April certainly wasn't the first person to have fallen for Vincent, or the first to be wounded by his indifference. She'd been new and daring and exciting, but that had faded as time went on. Now she was just a girl who could easily be hurt.

The aunts tried to encourage her not to be so good. Goodness, in their opinion, was not a virtue but merely spinelessness and fear disguised as humility. The aunts believed there were more important things to worry about than dust bunnies under the beds or fallen leaves piling up on the porch.

Lucy Green couldn't stop reading. She was a secret reader...

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

Mrs. Jones leaned in close. She smelled of wool and peppermint. There's a man somewhere who wanted you to believe in something...

She is surrounded by stalks of dahlias, orange and yellow and pale red, with leaves so big you could write your life story on each one. She looks like a flower in the garden, just like her mother said.

you repudiate who you are. Once you do that, life works against you, and your fate is no longer your own.

This is what happens when you stay in one place for thirteen years, Anne says. First you own things. Then they own you.

If people aren't there for you now, when you really need them, they never will be, and it's time to move on. You'll be amazed by how many new friends you have in the after . They'll be the ones who aren't afraid of sorrow, who know we can't avoid it. The best we can do is face it together.

Never agree to take a puppy for a week, Elinor knew that now. A week was all the time it took to be won over completely, despite the messes on the carpets and the shedding, the chewed slippers and shredded books.

The things that go wrong are rarely the things you,ve thought to worry about.

The children on the playground all heard her. They took off running together, as far away as possible from Antonia Owens, who might hex you if you did her wrong, and from her aunts, who might boil up garden toads and slip them into your stew, and from her mother, who was so angry and protective she might just freeze you in time, ensuring that you were forever trapped on the green grass at the age of ten or eleven.

that 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.

Go," Jet told Franny. "What's meant to happen will.

After living with his art in my own chamber, I saw there was more than mere mimicry, and that art was a world unto itself, with its own symbols and language. A leaf seen in a certain light might be gray or violet as well as purple, and a latticework of twigs might easily turn red as the sky paled above the city.