Quotes from Alice Hoffman

Was it possible to know anyone, truly?

He kept thinking about the life span of a mayfly, and all the time he had wasted, and frankly he wasn't willing to waste any more.

Unable are the Loved to die, for love is immortality, the Reverend quoted at the end of the marriage service, a blessing not only for the happy couple exchanging vows, but also in remembrance of Jet, whose favorite poet was Emily Dickinson, and of Franny, who had sacrificed so much for those she loved.

I'm trying to find someone who doesn't want to be found. That can be as hard as looking for a shadow.

Lion had to kiss her then and there, even though when he kissed her he felt as though he were swallowing her sadness.

I want the words you hold in your hand, lamplight in a jar.

Pride is a funny thing; it can make what is truly worthless appear to be a treasure. As soon as you let go of it, pride shrinks to the size of a fly, but one that has no head, and no tail, and no wings with which to lift itself off the ground.

In her opinion, everything goes wrong if you give it enough time. Close your eyes, count to three, and chances are you'll have some sort of disaster creeping up on you.

Oh, how Vincent wished he could tell his sisters how unexpected everything was. He wished they could sit down at the table, today, in the sunlight, so that he could tell them everything. Once, a long time ago, before we knew who we were, we thought we wanted to be like everyone else. How lucky to be exactly who we were.

I let the story out slowly; I knew from all the reading I'd done that was the best way to tell a tale, start far away from the center, but know where that center is at all times.

Oh, you're moonlight, he'd said. Harder to see, but there for those who look.

I was walking through a dream rather than living my life. I had become someone else, but who was that someone?

How can he do this to you?" Shelby says of her father. "I don't care, I have you," Sue says. Shelby says nothing. The fact that she's the high point of someone's life is pathetic. She's probably never loved her mother more than she does at this moment. Maybe she didn't even know what love was before today.

And then, when Kylie looks back at her house, she has the strangest feeling. The house seems lost to her in some way, as though she were looking at a memory, a place she used to live in and will never forget but one she can't go back to, not anymore.

what she misses most is someone knowing she's alive

It was not possible to hold on to ashes. In my dreams I had always walked out of the past, and it shut behind me, a door I couldn't unlock. Now I intended to do the same in my waking life.

When darkness falls, and the sky sifts down into the river, the woman who swims in its depths holds on to the side of the canoe that drifts toward her. She pulls herself into the boat, where a tall man is waiting in the fading light, for he is an expert in matters of light and darkness, a master of seeing through shadows. He spies her every time, even when the sky is murky an she is invisible to all other men's eyes.

The season I haunted Dreamland was the same summer I borrowed Maureen's copy of Jane Eyre. I wanted to read it for myself so that I might understand the depth of Mr. Morris's passion for this tale. Maureen said I could only have access to the volume when I was with her, for she was so protective of the book she kept it wrapped in brown paper to shield its cover.

I knew I was supposed to have sympathy for the main character, the orphaned Jane, who was near my age and all but friendless and whose name I took for myself on the nights I wandered off on my own. Yet it was the madwoman locked in the attic who held my interest and compassion.

Unleavened Bread, all

Eddie had come to understand that what a man saw and what actually existed in the natural world often were contradictory. The human eye was not capable of true sight, for it was constrained by its own humanness, clouded by regret, and opinion, and faith.

Loneliness can drive even the most alienated person to attempt to make cotact with another soul, even when it's via a soullness medium.

Did you not think this was what the world was like? the Man from the Valley said to me.

Where did he take you?" she asked. She had wanted to ask this question for four years. It had taken that long for the words to come out. Some words drew blood, they cut your tongue, they made you know things you couldn't unknow.