Alice hoffman quotes

Just because something is unspoken doesn't mean that it disappears.

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

[Fairy tales] are like a journey to the woods and the many ways you can get lost. Some people say it's not a good idea to read fairy tales to anyone under the age of eight because they are brutal and raw. When I was a kid I often felt that kids's books were speaking down to me, but I never felt that way about fairy tales. They are bloody and scary, but so is life.

I read Betty Smith's "A Tree Grows in Brooklyn," all of Shirley Jackson's books, which I loved.

I thought that love was a river, endless and deep. I thought it merely happened, washing over you like water. It was nothing to search for, nothing to force. I didn't understand that even when we can't control our fate, we alone have the last say in matters of the heart. We can give it freely, even in the worst of times, even when it isn't returned.

Being human means losing everything we love best in the world," she murmured as she released me. "But would you ask to be anything else?

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

Some things, when they change, never do return to the way they once were. Butterflies for instance, and women who've been in love with the wrong man too often.

Every time I finish a book, I forget everything I learned writing it - the information just disappears out of my head

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.

When I walk, I walk with you. Where I go, you're with me always.

Among men and women, those in love do not always announce themselves with declarations and vows. But they are the ones who weep when you're gone. Who miss you every single night, especially when the sky is so deep and beautiful, and the ground so very cold.

The only people out at this hour were ones who couldn't sleep,those haunted by one thing or another:love thwarted, love lost, love thrown away. They were the sort of people who didn't want to be noticed, who wanted to slip through shadows, be alone with their despair.

They were written on cheap blue notebooks bought by poor women. I'm interested in folk tales in the way that medicine and magic in women's stories are all kind of combined.

When you start writing the magic comes when the characters seem to take on a life of their own and write the words for themselves.

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.

You can never tell about a person by guessing...that's why language was invented. Otherwise, we'd all be like dogs, sniffing each other to find out where we stood.

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.

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.

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

The original fairy tale was about the youngest sister going into a room in the castle and finding all the bodies of the wives that came before her - she is confronted with truth, thinking about how often we think we know people and we really don't.

Every time someone forgets, someone else disappears,' my brother wrote.

My darling girl, when are you going to realize that being normal is not necessarily a virtue? It rather denotes a lack of courage." - Aunt Frances

Love ambushed you, it lay in wait, dormant for days or years. It was the red thread, the peach stone, the kiss, the forgiveness. It came after you, it escaped you, it was invisible, it was everything.

Are people drawn to each other because of the stories they carry inside?

She liked to disappear, even when she was in the same room as other people. It was a talent, as it was a curse.

I don't think I make much of a distinction between the 'real' and the 'fantastic.' They both seem to be threads in the same cloth as far as I'm concerned.

She was disappearing a little more each day, so thin, so frail, a wisp of smoke. One day she would surely vanish altogether, and there was no way to stop her.

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

Pride is a funny thing; it can make what is truly worthless appear to be a treasure.

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

The grass he walked through was new and a sweet smell clung to his clothes. There was blue dye on his hands from the wild irises... that the color of the sky was a shade that could never be replicated in any photograph, just as Heaven could never be seen from the confines of Earth.

Fairytales were maps formed of blood and hair and bones; they were the knots of the sub-conscious unwound. Every word in every tale was real and as true as apples and stones. They all led to the story inside the story.

Everything was red, the air, the sun, whatever I looked at. Except for him. I fell in love with someone who was human. I watched him walk through the hills and come back in the evening when his work was through. I saw things no woman would see: that he knew how to cry, that he was alone. I cast myself at him, like a fool, but he didn't see me. And then one day he noticed I was beautiful and he wanted me. He broke me off and took me with him, in his hands, and I didn't care that I was dying until I actually was.

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.

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

You can't dispute the ridiculous. You can't argue reasonably with evil.

This day is going to be awful. It's the sort of day you wouldn't mind losing completely, even if it meant your life would be twenty-four hours shorter.

Unrequited love is so boring. Weeping under a blue-black sky is for suckers or maniacs.

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

Mothers always find ways to fit in the work - but then when you're working, you feel that you should be spending time with your children and then when you're with your children, you're thinking about working.

When the cold comes to New England it arrives in sheets of sleet and ice. In December, the wind wraps itself around bare trees and twists in between husbands and wives asleep in their beds. It shakes the shingles from the roofs and sifts through cracks in the plaster. The only green things left are the holly bushes and the old boxwood hedges in the village, and these are often painted white with snow. Chipmunks and weasels come to nest in basements and barns; owls find their way into attics. At night,the dark is blue and bluer still, as sapphire of night.

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

People hide their truest nature. I understood that; I even applauded it. What sort of world would it be if people bled all over the sidewalks, if they wept under trees, smacked whomever they despised, kissed strangers, revealed themselves?

Love is worth the sum of itself, and nothing more.

I really feel like the gift is also the curse. It's always half-and-half. Whatever brings you the most joy will also probably bring you the most pain. Always a price to pay

That's why there are ten gates to pass through before you reach the garden. If life were easy there would be one gate. There would be no gates at all.

I also like the whole idea of fairy tales and folk tales being a woman's domain, considered a lesser domain at the time they were told.

Sometimes movies really are the best medicine.

A red map isn't easy to follow. Any document made of blood and bones is tricky. Wrong turns are easily made, and there are often piles of stones in the road. A person has to disregard time and sorrow and all the damage done. If you follow, if you dare, the thread always leads to whomever or whatever you've forgotten.

No one knows you like a person with whom you've shared a childhood. No one will ever understand you in quite the same way.

The sky is already purple; the first few stars have appeared, suddenly, as if someone had thrown a handful of silver across the edge of the world.

You are only worthy of what you prove yourself to be.

Being an outsider is the one thing we all have in common.

My grandmother told me once that when you lose somebody you think you've lost the whole world as well, but that's not the way things turn out in the end. Eventually, you pick yourself up and look out the window, and once you do you see everything that was there before the world ended is out there still. There are the same apple trees and the same songbirds, and over our heads, the very same sky that shines like heaven, so far above us we can never hope to reach such heights.

I thought you were supposed to be the champion of your people,' I said. I live because I need to do that. For anyone who is left.' Don't you see? No one will be left. Protect them now or there will be no one to protect!' This is a battle that goes on and on. It never ends. You're too young to understand. No! You're too much of a coward to fight.' I was sick of lies and secrets and of battles so old we had to erase who we were to fight back. And still we lost. Still we were tied to posts.

Books may well be the only true magic.

I just finished Colson Whitehead's "The Underground Railroad," which I think is a work of genius.

...and so many orchards circled the village that on some crisp October afternoons the whole wold smelled like pie.

Another world must surely exist somewhere one where she would be known in some deep way that was far beyond words.

I wrote to find beauty and purpose, to know that love is possible and lasting and real.... Once I got to my desk, once I started writing, I still believed anything was possible.

It's not the lie that's the problem; it's the distance the lie forges between you.

If every life is a river, then it's little wonder that we do not even notice the changes that occur until we are far out in the darkest sea. One day you look around and nothing is familiar, not even your own face. My name once meant daughter, grandaughter, friend, sister, beloved. Now those words mean only what their letters spell out; Star in the night sky. Truth in the darkness. I have crossed over to a place where I never thought I'd be. I am someone I would have never imagined. A secret. A dream. I am this, body and soul. Burn me. Drown me. Tell me lies. I will still be who I am.

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

She didn't like being twelve. It felt like someplace between who she'd been and who she was about to be. It felt like no place at all.

I always felt and still feel that fairy tales have an emotional truth that is so deep that there are few things that really rival them

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

Anyway, the sort of love that will not wait is probably best to pass by

There are some things, after all, that Sally Owens knows for certain: Always throw spilled salt over your left shoulder. Keep rosemary by your garden gate. Add pepper to your mashed potatoes. Plant roses and lavender, for luck. Fall in love whenever you can.

When I read Jerome D. Salinger's "The Catcher in the Rye" that was the first time I felt my mind blow open. I thought that book was speaking to me. I was 12 or 13 when I read that. I read everything on my mother's bookshelves.

The weak are cruel. The strong have no need to be.

I have crossed over to a place where I never thought I’d be. I am someone I would have never imagined. A secret. A dream. I am this, body and soul. Burn me. Drown me. Tell me lies. I will still be who I am.

After a while, the characters I'm writing begin to feel real to me. That's when I know I'm heading in the right direction

They weren't true stories; they were better than that.

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

There was the blue sky above her and all those many roses, the ones that gave off the scent of cloves in the rain and the ones that left a trace of lemon on your fingers, the ones that were the color of blood, and those that were as white as clouds. Each one was sweeter than the next and as red as gemstones.

Hearts were made for being broken. There's really no way around it if you want to be a human being.

I think secrets often come out. I spoke to a friend who is a therapist and I asked her if there were people who came to her and admitted to doing horrible things and she said, 'More than you know.'.

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.

Sometimes, running away means you're headed in the exact right direction.

I wasn't quite as certain that I knew her soul. When it came right down to it, I wasn't sure she knew me either.

My mother, Abra, had taught me that all people are made from the same dust. When our days here are gone, all men and women enter the same garden.

Avoid men who call you Baby, and women who have no friends, and dogs that scratch at their bellies and refuse to lie down at your feet. Wear dark glasses; bathe with lavender oil and cool fresh water. Seek shelter from the sun at noon.

Remember what I've told you. Remember me.

Be careful what you wish for. I know that for a fact. Wishes are brutal, unforgiving things. They burn your tongue the moment they're spoken and you can never take them back.

...he had a way of taking your hand which made it clear he'd have to be the one to let go." From Alice Hoffman's "Local Girls", pg.102.

Trouble is just like love, after all; it comes in unannounced and takes over before you've had a chance to reconsider, or even to think.

Feel lucky for what you have when you have it. Isn't that the point? Happily ever after doesn't mean happy forever.

Do people choose the art that inspires them — do they think it over, decide they might prefer the fabulous to the real? For me, it was those early readings of fairy tales that made me who I was as a reader and, later on, as a storyteller.

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

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.

When all is said and done, the weather and love are the two elements about which one can never be sure.

All the characters in my books are imagined, but all have a bit of who I am in them - much like the characters in your dreams are all formed by who you are

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

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

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

Do you ever just put your arms out and just spin and spin and spin? Well, that's what love is like; everything inside of you tells you to stop before you fall, but for some reason you just keep going.

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

You have to choose the voice you are going to trust. You can't listen to everyone.

It doesn't matter what people tell you. It doesn't matter what they might say. Sometimes you have to leave home. Sometimes, running away means you're headed in the exact right direction.

No one knows how to write a novel until it's been written

Some people say, 'Save yourself and you save your ways.' I say, 'Be yourself and you save your soul.

Every fairy tale had a bloody lining. Every one had teeth and claws.

When I write for teens, I feel I can cut through everything and get to the bare bones. I can get straight into the emotional world of the character.

I feel as if when you love a book it becomes a part of you whether you have it on your shelves or not.

Still, she knows one thing for certain: never judge a relationship unless you are the one wrapped up in its arms.

You can be betrayed in your sleep. The whole world can tilt while you're dreaming of butterflies.

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.

Sometimes the right thing feels all wrong until it is over and done with.

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.

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

What men yearn for they often destroy.

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.

Ironically, now that my children are older and gone quite a bit, I find it harder to work when they're not around. Too much free time!

He has the ability to catch someone by the way that he looks at her, and make her wish he would go on looking.

It was the sort of beauty you feel so deeply it becomes contagious and somehow makes you feel beautiful too.

The moon is always jealous of the heat of the day, just as the sun always longs for something dark and deep.

Real love, after all, was worth the price you paid, however briefly it might last.

Hawthorne has given us a tradition that some people refer to as Yankee Magic Realism, and I do think there is a certain quality to the landscape that definitely leads into the dark woods.

Unfinished business always comes back to haunt you, and a man who swears he'll love you forever isn't finished with you until he's done.

The adults don't know what's happening on the kids' universe and the kids don't know what's happening on the adults' universe

People want to ignore what they can't understand. They're looking for logic at any cost.

In losing a friend, she is reminded of all she has lost and all she stands to lose again. There is nothing to be done to make it any easier. We all grieve alone.

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.

I'm at the point where going forward is easier than going back.