Quotes from Alice Hoffman

I was beginning to understand. My grandmother's love was cold because she was afraid of things; that was why everything had to be perfect.

Never look back, that's what she's told herself. Don't think about swans or being alone in the dark. Don't think of storms, or lightning and thunder, or the true love you won't ever have. Life is brushing your teeth and making breakfast for your children and not thinking about things, and as it turns out, Sally is first-rate at all of this. She gets things done and done on time.

You don't fight for peace sister,' Nahara told me, 'You embrace it.

She was so busy forgetting, she couldn't take a single step into the future.

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. Whatever was witnessed in the real world was unknowable in real time. It was the eye of the camera that captured the world as it truly was.

If we had paid attention, we would have understood there are some things in this world you cannot outrun.

I wasn't good company, that was true, and people avoided me, but that was all right. I was too busy dreaming.

I wept to think that life went on even when so much had been lost, that rain still fell and myrtle grew between the rocks.

We never know the end of the story until we get there.

Young people believe that regret is something you will never feel if you simply do as you please, but sometimes it is a matter of degree.

But what we are given is taken as well, so that we know God's glory comes to us from His will alone.

Our rest is formed by our waking life and our waking life is formed by our sorrows.

Good fortune can take forever to get to you, but as it turns out, sorrow is as quick as a shot.

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.

Jill and I have known each other our whole lives. One house separates our houses but we act as if it doesn't exist. We met before we were born and we'll probably still know each other after we die. At least, that's the way we're planning it.

Although she'd never believe it, those lines in Gillian's face are the most beautiful part about her. They reveal what she's gone through and what she's survived and who exactly she is, deep inside.

There's a little witch in all of us.

Love was like that, like a dream you didn't quite understand, one in which you didn't necessarily know what you were looking at until it was right in front of you.

Maybe a hundred years ago our people should have run away from this place, I said... And then run from the next place and the next place and the place after that? You run once, what makes you think you won't have to run all the rest of your life?... We love moment to moment... Everything changes. One minute we are part of the river, and the next we are joined with the sea.

When you fall in love like that, time doesn't matter. This was the secret he told Maria, the last words he ever said. What belonged to you once, will always belong to you. Be grateful if you have walked through the world with another's heart in your hand.

Her one salvation was the novels she read. On nights when she thought it might be better not to be alive without Levi in the world, she opened a book and was therefore saved, discovering that a novel was as great an escape as any spell.

They say that dogs may dream, and when Topsy was old, his feet would move in his sleep. With his eyes closed he would often make a noise that sounded quite human, as if greeting someone in his dreams. At first it seemed that he believed Sara would return, but as the years went by I understood that his loyalty asked for no reward, and that love comes in unexpected forms. His wish was small, as hers had been -- merely to be beside her. As for me, I already knew I would never get what I wanted.

The lonelier you are, the more you pull away, until humans seem an alien race, with customs and a language you can't begin to understand.

The more you feel, the stronger you are.