Quotes from Alice Hoffman

If you're disconnected from someone for a long enough time, does blood still commit you to one another? Does history, or fate?

It was a clear, bright, beautiful day, the air tinged with salt, the climbing roses blooming. The graveyard was filled with sunlight.

Sisters were sisters, after all, and if they didn't stick up for each other, who would?

Will her husband love her?" "Would you want love you had to buy?" Isabelle asked.

In Massachusetts everything had a faint green aroma, a combination of cucumber, wisteria, dogwood, and peppermint.

Put us in a jar, she thought. Put us in eternity.

Every step I took hurt, I walked on daggers, on hot blue fire. Not holding him was like not breathing, not being quite alive. As

We grew careless, as people who are lost often do.

Desire had a way of making a person oddly courageous. In the aunts' opinion, it could sneak up on a grown woman and turn her from a sensible creature into something as foolish as a flea that keeps chasing after the same old dog.

I don't make all the decisions, you know," Isabelle managed to say. "I just do the best I can to face what life brings. That's the secret, you know. That's the way you change your fate.

You're better than this," Franny said. "Am I? I see things I can't change, Franny. When I drink I stop the visions. It was in pieces but it's coming together in one picture. And lately, what I've been seeing is an accident. A bad one. And soon.

What had she thought, that love was a toy, something easy and sweet, just to play with? Real love was dangerous, it got you from inside and held on tight, and if you didn't let go fast enough you might be willing to do anything for its sake.

She didn't understand 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 it the thing that lasts.

all the same, there were some things they needed to learn: do not drink milk after a thunderstorm, for it will certainly be sour. always leave out seeds for the birds when the first snow falls. wash your hair with rosemary. drink lavender tea when you cannot sleep. know that the only remedy for love is to love more.

It was so much easier to see another person's future than it was to understand your own. Even when you kept your eyes wide open, the world would surprise you.

Fate is what you make it, or you will be what it makes of you.

Elinor would have surely ignored them, such was her habit and her inclination, even though she knew whenever someone ignored what hurt her most, she'd wind up in grave circumstances. Ignore love, she now understood, and a person might bleed forever, even if no one could tell.

Shouldn't he have waited?" "Not when you told him to go away. People believe you when you say things like that. You never told him you loved him, did you?

For women who wanted a child, mistletoe was to be strung over their beds. If that had no effect, they must tie nine knots in a strong rope, then burn the rope and eat the ashes and soon enough they would conceive.

Women pitied her, but went on their way; they had their own troubles to attend to, and mercy was a scarce commodity.

Blue must be worn for protection.

Maybe he understands that saying thank you can be just as hard as saying good-bye.

It was too exciting a time to be tied down to school.

Remind customers they must be careful what they wish for, Isabelle instructed. What's done cannot be undone. What's set into motion takes on a life of its own.