Alice Hoffman - The Dovekeepers (2011)

20 Sourced Quotes

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Perhaps it is possible to discover more in silence than in speech. Or perhaps it is only that those who are silent among us learn to listen.

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

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

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
Any weapon touched by a woman, even by accident, must be cleansed with both water and prayer so that her essence would not linger, diverting the warrior who might use it next, for even the faintest touch could bring lust to that man's heart. Perhaps that meant a woman who was well trained in arms would be the superior warrior, her attention never wavering from her task.

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
I loved him even now, as he took a knife to my throat, as I drowned in blood, as I whispered "Cousin, you were wrong. We were born to live.

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

Alice Hoffman
Being human means losing everything we love best in the world. But would you ask to be anything else?

Alice Hoffman
Still anyone who trusts a serpent deserves its bite. The wise see a creature for what it is, not what it says it may be.

Alice Hoffman
We stood and watched as God abandoned us, and then we did the best we could.

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

Alice Hoffman
He wanted pain, I saw that in him, and what a man wants he will often manage to find.

Alice Hoffman
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.

Alice Hoffman
This was what it meant to be human, to know that time moved and all things changed.

Alice Hoffman
I must keep my head and not give in to desire, for desire is what causes women to drown.

Alice Hoffman
Here is the riddle of love: Everything it gives to you, it takes away.

Alice Hoffman
The voice that arises out of the silence is something no one can imagine until it is heard. It roars when it speaks, it lies to you and convinces you, it steals from you and leaves you without a single word of comfort.

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

Alice Hoffman
I knew what it was to yearn for a life so distant it seemed that it had never been anything more than a dream.

Alice Hoffman