Alice Hoffman Quotes - Page 2

I KNEW I MUST do all as I was told, yet something burned inside me, a seed of defiance that must have derived from a long-ago ancestor. Perhaps my mind was inflamed from the books I had read and the worlds I had imagined.

It was amazing how many colors there were, all running into the gutter in a stream: a dozen shades of blue, twenty different reds, and all that black soot, like a nightmare given form, the insides of a heart, destroyed so easily, done away with before anyone could stop the damage, or salvage what was lost, or even try to save him.

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.

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.

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.

Interesting, but she could see that the boy didn't have a single lie in him. A very rare condition, especially for the male of the species.

In my memories I have set my life in Brooklyn between pieces of glass, separate from my current existence, and this has enabled me to move forward. The past cannot tie me in knots, nor can it cause me to drown. And yet what is stored in glass belongs to me still. Each piece is a part of me: the hummingbirds, the locked doors, Mr. Morris in the yard, the pear tree, the woman covered by bees, and you. Especially you.

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

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

He had appeared beside her because she had wanted him to. She had called him to her, and was calling him still. Even when she fell asleep, she dreamed of water, as if the world were topsy-turvy and everything she cared about had been lost in the deep. She plunged through the green waves with her eyes wide open, searching for the world as she'd known it, but that world no longer existed; everything that had once been solid was liquid now, and the birds swam alongside the fish.

What was a demon but a lost soul, one that had been forced to use his skills to survive.

Every man engaged in war tells himself he can alter what has been written, that it is he, not God, who is the maker of destiny, free to change what is meant to be.

Our house was littered with books- in the kitchen, under the beds, stuck between the couch pillows--far too many for her the ever finish. I suppose I thought if my grandmother kept up her interests, she wouldn't die; she'd have to stay around to finish the books she was so fond of. "I've got to get to the bottom of this one," she'd say, as if a book were no different from a pond or a lake. I thought she'd go on reading forever but it didn't work out that way.

Blue must be worn for protection. Moonstones were useful in connecting with the living, topaz to contact the dead. Copper, sacred to Venus, will call a man to you, and black tourmaline will eliminate jealousy. When it came to love, you must always be careful. If you dropped something belonging to the man you loved into a candle flame, then added pine needles and marigold flowers, he would arrive on your doorstep by morning, so you would do well to be certain you wanted him there. The most basic and reliable love potion was made from anise, rosemary, honey, and cloves boiled for nine hours on the back burner of the old stove. It had always cost $9.99 and was therefore called Love Potion Number Nine, which worked best on the ninth hour of the ninth day of the ninth month.

My mother was teaching me that the inside of something was not necessarily its outside. Always look carefully, she told me. Look with more than your eyes.

... a man always revealed his own inner story in his actions and expressions. A man's past deeds foretold his future and allowed anyone with half a brain to divine the path he would take.

I once believed that life was a gift. I thought whatever I wanted I would someday possess. Is that greed, or only youth? Is it hope or stupidity? As far as I was concerned the future was a book I could write to suit myself, chapter after chapter of good fortune. All was right with the world, and my place in it was assured, or so I thought then. I had no idea that all stories unfold like white flowers, petal by petal, each in its own time and season, dependant on circumstances and fate. ~ Green Heart, Alice Hoffman

There is the outside of a story, and the inside of a story... One is the fruit and may be delicious, but the other is the seed.

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 thought he knew me better than most...Then one nigh Jack brought me flowers, a handful of fading daisies he'd picked up at a farm stand, but flowers all the same. That was the end; that was how he ruined everything.

That just goes to show that you never can tell about a person by guessing," Frances informs her niece. "That's why language was invented. Otherwise, we'd all be like dogs, sniffing each other to find out where we stood.

From the time I could read, I found solace in my father's library...At the ages of ten and eleven and twelve I would have preferred to remain in the library...

For six months I did what women do: I waited. This is what women are taught to be good at. It's said that a woman's life is merely preparation for the primal nine-month wait. Whatever the reason, they do it well. Sometimes they drink or bite their fingernails down to the wrist. They count stars and initials and wait: for something to happen, for something to pass, to change, to begin, to end.

[Eddie] wondered if every criminal saw himself as the hero of his own story and if every thankless son was convinced he'd been mistreated by his father.

She can feel his blood, just beneath his skin; when he breathes, the air fills with smoke. He's like a dragon, ancient and fearless.

Feelings are best left concealed. They can bite you if you're not careful. They can eat you alive.

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.

They sealed this promise by hooking pinkies, the way they used to, long ago, when promises didn't hurt as much.

Someone killed himself because of me once, Meredith said.People kill themselves because of what's inside of them, not because of other people.

Shelby watched the books burn. She wonders if words are pouring down on other people's houses,sad words, like beast and mourn and sorrow and mother.

...who I am to talk? I dream of rain.

He was withdrawing. I think it was getting harder for him to accept his fate. Like a bird in a cage, he grew silent.

She had been grief stricken as her father lay dying but now she felt weightless, the way people do when they're no longer sure they have a reason to be connected to this world. The slightest breeze could have carried her away, into the night sky, across the universe.

Once I knew nothing about McKay and now I knew everything about him. This seemed as good as any reason for not walking out the door. There are so many ways to stop the knowing, and I tried them all. I tried silence, I tried heroin, I tried calling it love. And then I stopped trying to call my dumbness any one of ten thousand names.

Don't make me sit through reality.

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

I only have one story now.The story was heroin. It was made out of sensation, not words; it was invisible and murderous and unstoppable. Sam disappeared from her slowly, like a snowman melting, until all Blanca had left of him was a pool of freezing-cold blue water, arctic cold, sorrow colored, evaporating with every year. She did her best to hold onto him, but it was impossible, like carrying ice into the desert or making time stand still. After the final fight when Sam moved out, Blanca saw him less and less often. He no longer had a presence; he was like the outline of a person, an absence rather than a full-fledged human being.

Children would beg for a peppermint drop each time he walked into town, and they'd follow behind, asking for a second and a third. When he died suddenly, while working late at his office, every boy and girl in the village reported smelling mint in the night air, as if somehing sweet had passed them right by.

...never to rush something I was creating, but instead let it come into being as if it had a soul of it's own.

As for Gus, he had come to Haddan with no appreciation for the human race and no expectations of his fellow man. He was full ready to confront contempt; he'd been beleaguered and insulted often enough to have learned to ignore anything with a heartbeat. Still, every once in a while he made an exception, as he did with Carlin Leander. He appreciated everything about Carlin and lived for the hour when they left their books and sneaked off to the graveyard. Not even the crow nesting in the elm tree could dissuade him from his mission, for when he was beside Carlin, Gus acquired a strange optimism; in the light of her radiance the rest of the world began to shine. For a brief time, bad faith and human weakness could be forgotten or, at the very least, temporarily ignored. When it came time to go back to their rooms, Gus followed on the path, holding on to each moment, trying his best to stretch out time. Standing in the shadows of the rose arbor in order to watch Carlin climb back up the fire escape at St. Anne's, his heart ached. He could tell he was going to be devastated, and yet he was already powerless. Carlin always turned and waved before she stepped through her window and Gus Pierce always waved back, like a common fool, an idiot of a boy who would have done anything to please her.

I'm trying to find someone who doesn't want to be found.""That can be as hard as looking for a shadow.

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

She has an eye for tragedy and sorrow. Show her a rose and she'll see only the wasp in the center of the bloom.

I only had access to him when we were together in the library, and I loved them both -the library and my father- equally and without question.

Love someone and they're yours forever

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.

...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.

The story became a cloud, and the cloud a sheet of rain, and rain fell throughout the empire.

I knew the power of a single wish, after all. Invisible and inevitable, like a butterfly that beats its wings in one corner of the globe and with that single action changes the weather halfway across the world.

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

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.

Even as a small child, I understood that woman had secrets, and that some of these were only to be told to daughters. In this way we were bound together for eternity.

There is no fiercer enemy than a word. A word that can be written down in pages and punctuated by quotation marks and commas and spelled out in contracts and poems and sighs, in old whispers and song lyrics, in promises and vows.

In good time every secret must be shared and every miracle called into question.

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.

When Juliet came flying down the hallway, Stella didn't recognize her friend. Juliet hadn't bothered with makeup; she was wearing a nightgown underneath her raincoat and had on plastic flip-flops. This was the way loved walked in, barely dressed, confused, panic-stricken, overcome, not caring what anyone thought or what they believed.

I knew what happened in fairy tales. The strong survived while the weak were eaten alive.

Such was the case with most unhappy students; they avoided even one another, so intent on their own unhappiness they failed to notice the other lost souls around them.

The stars are reflected from within the black water in the cistern. I find comfort in the omen I glean from this: light in the darkness, truth when it seems there is none.

Pain was something to get used to, to inure yourself against. I would rather hurt myself than be hurt by someone else, and so I took up this practice with a sense of purpose and without remorse.