Alice Hoffman Quotes

132 Sourced Quotes

He was in love, and people in that condition did stupid, unfathomable things. They were all flawed, every single one.

Alice Hoffman
He stepped off the pavement like a man jumping off a bridge, as calm as a swimmer with an ocean out below. Lucy had known what he was going to do the instant their eyes met. She'd know what he intended because she would have done the very same thing if she'd had his courage. Nothing was going to break his fall.

Alice Hoffman
Do what you want, do what you will, do what you have to, do what you think you cannot.

Alice Hoffman
Here's the thing about luck,... you don't know if it's good or bad until you have some perspective.

Alice Hoffman
You build your world around someone, and then what happens when he disappears? Where do you go-into pieces, into atoms, into the arms of another man? You go shopping, you cook dinner, you work odd hours, you make love to someone else on June nights. But you're not really there.

Alice Hoffman
No barrier was strong enough to keep out the movement of time.

Alice Hoffman
My mother's blood that would last forever after. The blood of my brother, my grandfather, my father.

Alice Hoffman
It's not finding what's lost, it's understanding what you've found.

Alice Hoffman
I wonder how a lioness will manage in a dovecote. Can you put away your teeth and claws?

Alice Hoffman
That was the way illness appeared in a house, in the corners, in between floorboards, on the hooks in the closet, along with the sweaters and coats.

Alice Hoffman
I thought of the bowl of water my mother taught me to look into. It was true, everything a person ever needed to know was right there in a single bowl small enough to fit in the palm of one hand.

Alice Hoffman
Some things, however, are true no matter how hard you might try to block them out,
and a lie is always a lie, no matter how prettily told. Some doors, once they're opened,
can never be closed again, just as some trust, once it's been lost, can never be won back.

Alice Hoffman
Cleaning up after themselves was a low priority for Margo and my mother. They had both recovered from cancer scares, failed marriages, and lost hope; in their opinion, dirt could wait.

Alice Hoffman
Others said May was best, that sweet green time when lilacs bloomed and gardens along Main Street were filled with sugary pink peonies and Dutch tulips.

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

Alice Hoffman
Once you know some things, you can't unknow them. It's a burden that can never be given away.

Alice Hoffman
Every problem has a solution, although it may not be the outcome that was originally hoped for or expected.

Alice Hoffman
You can try to take sorrow and make it into something enduring, meaningful and beautiful. I always feel guilty that this is my job, that I get to do this

Alice Hoffman
My theory is that everyone, at one time or another, has been at the fringe of society in some way: an outcast in high school, a stranger in a foreign country, the best at something, the worst at something, the one who's different. Being an outsider is the one thing we all have in common.

Alice Hoffman
The sisters were glad to be together. They had the easy sort of relationship where they didn't have to speak to be understood.

Alice Hoffman
My grandmother was overwhelmed by what was happening to us. She ahd moved back into the past because the here and the now was too terrible.

Alice Hoffman
Never look at other people's bad fortune,' my mother said. 'If you do, it will come back to find you instead of its rightful owner.

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

Alice Hoffman
Crying wasn't like riding a bike. Give it up, and you quickly forget how it's done.

Alice Hoffman
Certain things need not be said, and there's nothing, not a whisper, prayer, not a sacrifice, not a payment of any price, that would change what's about to happen.

Alice Hoffman
And then I understood that she had no idea what she'd done to my family. She thought love and hatred were equal.

Alice Hoffman
What people read revealed so much about them that she considered our card catalog a treasure house of privileged secrets; each card contained the map of an individual's soul.

Alice Hoffman
If I hadn't learned my lesson, I would have wished we could stay there forever. But I knew better now. We'd seen what we'd come to see. The way to trick death. Breathe in. Breathe out. Watch as it all rises upwards, black and blue into the even bluer sky.

Alice Hoffman
But most important of all, she explained that it was all right to say 'No. I disagree.' that was a gift. I understood it was power. The power to think my own thoughts. The power to believe in myself.

Alice Hoffman
Weapons are kept from women, but such a naming suggests that perhaps men fear our talents in war as well as our desire for peace.

Alice Hoffman