Quotes from Alice Hoffman

no one is entitled to anything other than his freedom and the choices he makes.

She had come to believe that if her father had wanted a docile daughter, he should never have allowed her access to the ocean.

Is that what love is? To lose yourself completely? Or does love make you more than you could ever be alone?

It's true, tragedy can bring you closer or drive you apart.

Life was worth living, no matter what fate might bring.

Mrs. Farrell told me that no man was a monster, not even Heathcliff, and that most people's misdeeds were rooted in the treatment they'd received in the world.

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.

Whether you are mortal or not, you go on, even if sorrow nags at you.

Sally didn't believe a word the aunts said. Still she grew nervous from all this talk of death. Her skin became blotchy; her hair lost its shine. She stopped eating and sleeping and she hated to let Michael out of her sight. Now whenever he kissed her, she cried and wished she had never fallen in love in the first place. It had made her too helpless, because that's what love did. There was no way around it and no way to fight it. Now if she lost, she lost everything.

he couldn't remember how it felt to live his life without his dog.

What was a dream but a way of knowing what was inside you? After all this time, they forgave each other on this morning in May when the world was green, when bees circled the laurel, when words didn't need to be spoken, when anything that had been lost could still be found.

What was desire anyway, when examined in the clear light of day? Was it the way a woman searched for her clothes in the morning, or the manner in which a man might watch her sit before the mirror and comb her hair? Was it a pale November dawn, when ice formed on windowpanes and crows called from the bare black trees? Or was it the way a person might yield to the night, setting forth on a path so unexpected that daylight would never again be completely clear?

It was easier not to face judgment, especially from your own kind.

You rescue something and you're responsible for it. But maybe that's what love is. Maybe it's like a hit-and-run accident; it smashes you before you can think. You do it no matter the cost and you keep on running.

Some secrets were much harder to keep than others, especially ones you kept from yourself.

and if a fool is believed then those who believe him are even bigger fools.

life. She was only a girl and exhausted from her journey, but she would do as she must in order to survive.

A secret is always hard, a stone wedged just beneath the skin. A constant reminder that won't go away, a secret invokes longing; it takes on a life of its own. In order to keep one well, certain things have to be done backward: Laughter instead of tears, a slow walk when the urge is to run. Always deny what is most important, at least in the presence of others.

In books, no one helped a girl who didn't help herself and every fairy tale ended with the same lessons. Trick your enemy, do what you must, believe in enchantments, save yourself.

The worst thing in the world for a mother is to leave her child. She couldn't bring herself to remember you, because if she did she'd have to leave you behind.

When you have lost your mother you have lost the world. You can sit in the garden and see nothing at all, not the woman on the garden bench watching over you, not the boy who refuses to leave you, even when you tell him to go. Your grief won't go away; it's not a door you can close, or a book you can put back on the shelf, or a kiss you can give back once it is given. This is the way the world is now. Keep the worst things to yourself, like a bone in your throat.

What is behind you is gone, what is in front of you awaits.

You could be who you wanted to be in the city. You could be whoever you were deep inside. It was like a garden of people, the only place where I didn't feel alone in a crowd.

He thought about where it was people went when they died, & how when he squinted he could see Cody, racing back & forth, barking, how his father seemed to stand right there on the riverbank, turning back the bees, closer than he'd ever been before.