Quotes from Alice Hoffman

There were so many stars in the dusky night I could see them falling as I gazed upward into the darkness. They seemed so near, like the Salt Sea in the distance, when they were so far away.

Here you are, Shelby tells Buddy. So now you know, she's not coming back. Not if you wait for a hundred years. She's left you and you're all alone, so get used to it.

It was too much for them, it was a story they had forgotten a long time ago, when they were thirteen and became men and locked their emotions away so they might navigate the cruelty of the world.

He dusted the dough with cumin and coriander and salt before he slid the loaves into the oven on flat wooden boards. Perhaps most important

She brought over a freshly brewed cup of black orchid tea and sat across from me. The tea was especially fragrant. From that day on, it was my favorite. The scent reminded me of rainy days and libraries and a jumble of gardens where there were flowers in bloom.

You can always tell a liar, for he will not look at you when he speaks, and often he has white spots on his fingernails, one to mark every lie he's told.

Love begins in curious ways, in daylight or in darkness, when you are in search of it or when you least expect to find it. You may think it is one thing, when in fact it is something else entirely: infatuation, loneliness, seduction

Was this what love did? Make you so grateful for a word or two that you'd practically beg for such things to be said?

she wanted to sit in the dark and whisper all of her fears into an ear which would hold every word like a silver shell.

The truth is, Helene was always the troublemaker. She had that bad-girl twinkle in her eye, and she always dragged Shelby along, whether it was the time they were caught shoplifting makeup at the Walt Whitman Mall or the time they took the Long Island Rail Road into Manhattan and didn't come home till two a.m.

I heard the voice of God all around me, but I was unafraid. I should have trembled before the Almighty and hid myself from sight. I should have taken a knife to my own flesh to cut away the mark of my past deeds. But now I understood that, although words were God's first creation, silence was closer to His divine spirit, and that prayers given in silence were infinitely greater than the thousands of words men might offer up to heaven.

I didn't know if I could speak even if I tried.

If you are loved, you never lose the person who loved you. You carry them with you all your life. They were with her as she ran.

She feels a little chill of expectation down her spine. There is someone, somewhere, who knows she's alive. "Somebody writes to me, Mom," Shelby tries to explain. "They think they know me. Maybe they read about me in the paper.

He must be an idiot to feel this way, but there's nothing he can do. He doesn't even know if he can manage to speak.

You don't forget the people you love," she told him. "That's what I've realized. They just get farther away. Like a spyglass turned around.

Maybe the most recent card is a message from the great beyond. Shelby can't stop thinking it might have been sent by Helene. She knows this is impossible; all the same, soon afterward she finds herself headed to Lewiston Street, where the Boyds live.

There were nearly as many frogs in the shallows, where lily pads floated. Some water lily flowers were white and some were yellow and some were the palest pink. Dragonflies darted above the water, their iridescent wings catching the glint of the sunlight.

Her mother warned that being different could cause grief, for men often destroyed what they didn't understand.

Sometime after the accident, her parents stopped talking to each other unless they needed to discuss a household chore or a doctor's appointment. It's true, tragedy can bring you closer or drive you apart.

Quando você quer alguém, essa pessoa tem poder sobre você.

In every fairy tale the girl who is saved is the one who rescues herself.

Há segredos que devem ser guardados e a maioria deles tem relação com as angústias do coração humano, pois a tristeza expressada em voz alta é uma tristeza vivida duas vezes.

When all was said and done, it was conceivable that a being's purpose remained the same throughout his life, and Eddie's purpose was exactly what it had been when he was a boy, to pursue the light and find what was lost.