Alice Hoffman quotes:

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.

I feel more influenced in my own work by dreams than I do by other writers' works in a way. Or by popular culture, movies - what else is there to write about than love and loss?

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.

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.

Sometimes movies really are the best medicine.

I think growing up is difficult and it's a process that I'm always interested in, with kids and adults, they are often on two different universes.

Any institution becomes a community - whether it's a high school or a boarding school or a publishing company or a small town where everybody knows certain things about people.

I think love is a huge factor in fiction and in real life. Is there a risk? Always. In fiction and in life.

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"

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.

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."

I think we are bound to, and by, nature. We may want to deny this connection and try to believe we control the external world, but every time there's a snowstorm or drought, we know our fate is tied to the world around us.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

Abra DeMadrigal didn't look young enough to be my sister anymore. Her sorrow weighed her down and aged her. She was still beautiful, but she looked very far away. No wonder our people had raven eyes, so distant, so sad. No matter how wise she was, my mother looked like a woman who hadn't truely believed how much evil there was in our world. Not until this moment.

Feel lucky for what you have when you have it. Isn't that the point? Happily ever after doesn't mean happy forever. The ever after, what precisely was that? Your dreams, your life, your death, your everything. Was it the blank space that went on without us? The forever after we were gone?

I never see a novel as a film while I'm writing it. Mostly because novels and films are so different, and I'm such an internal novelist.

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.

Jill told me that when you're really in love, you know right away. I'm not exactly sure how this happens. Is it like a flash of lightning? Like an angel tapping you on the shoulder? Or is it similar to choosing a puppy? You think you're picking the cutest one, but really you wind up going home with the one who keeps insisting on climbing into your lap.

I think we are bound to, and by, nature. We may want to deny this connection and try to believe we control the external world, but every time there's a snowstorm or drought, we know our fate is tied to the world around us

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

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.

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.'

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

Shut up and do not think. All the theorists agree: shut up and keep the words from being said. And all of the scars will remain invisible; and all of the scars will remain under the skin. Where they belong.

...and from then on whenever he smells lilacs he'll think about this moment. How the bees were circling above him, how purple the ink on the leaflets he's been distributing suddenly seemed, how he realized, all at once, just how beautiful a woman can be."

She truly believed that she carried her own fate in the palm of her hand, as if destiny was nothing more than a green marble or a robin's egg, a trinket any silly girl could scoop up and keep. She believed that all you wanted, you would eventually receive, and that fate was a force which worked with you, not against you."

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.

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

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

It was a great escape for me and it was a way to take a break from what was going on in my own world, to go into another world.

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

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.

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

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.

That is the joy of reading fiction: when all is said and done, the novel belongs to the reader and his or her imagination.

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.

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

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.

What else is there to write about than love and loss?

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.

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.

At midnight the wind in the tress can sound like the ocean. The moonlight can make a road appear as endless as the sea.

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.

Outside, the September air was enticingly fragrant, yellow with pollen and rich, lemony sunlight.

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

Some fates are guaranteed, no matter who tries to intervene.

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

I never even believed in happiness. I didn't think it existed. Now look at me. I'm ready to believe in just about anything.

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

Mean people are meaningless.

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

James had a theory about caged birds, one he hoped to prove when he became a scientist someday. He believed that all birds that had their freedom taken from them eventually lost their voices. Once that happened, they could never find their true song.

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

I head a bitterness that hadn't been there before. Something was changing inside him. He'd had enough of following the rules.

It was a miracle to live as birds do, except for one thing: anyone seen in flight would surely be captured, perhaps even shot down like a crow flying above a cornfield. It's always dangerous to be different, to appear as a monster in most people's eyes, even from a distance.

It's still horrible to wish the worst on anyone. I'm sure she had her reasons. Maybe people hurt her feelings, the same way I was hurt. A single word can feel like a rock being thrown at you.

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.

Although I am no longer caught in the past, the future seems like a ridiculous thing to me. Try to catch it, hold it in your hand. It disappears every time.

... the past was what we carried with us, threaded to the future, and we decided whether to keep it close or let it go.

... 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 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.

But I was not a mouse. In the fields where I walked, I was much more interested in the actions of the hawks.

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

I would have drowned without you to watch over me...I now understand there are a thousand ways to drown, and a thousand ways to rescue someone.

Stone should last forever, but on that night I came to understand that a stone was only another form of dust. Streams of holy dust loomed in the air, and every breath included remnants of the Temple, so that we inhaled that which was meant to stand through eternity.

...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.

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.

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

what was a rose but the living proof of desire, the single best evidence of human longing and earthly devotion. but desire could be twisted,after all, and Jealousy was the name of the rose that did well in arid souls.

Before she can stop herself, she thinks about desire, how it lives within you and yet is separate, surfacing when it chooses, without permission, in the harsh afternoon light, at the moment when you least expect to find it.

He knew even at an early age of seven, how dangerous it was for someone like him to have hope. He knows how to have no expectations. He can completely control not just what he wants, but what he needs

...early on Monday evening, when the sky was the color of a velvet ribbon falling over the hills.

You want me to lie to you?" said McKay. I shrugged. Why not? I didn't mind lies.

Your grand daughter may not be looking for trouble, but trouble is looking for her.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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?

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.

In a world of sorrow, love was an act of will. All you needed were the right ingredients.

Always keep mint on your windowsill in August, to ensure that buzzing flies will stay outside, where they belong. Don't think the summer is over, even when roses droop and turn brown and the stars shift position in the sky. Never presume August is a safe or reliable time of the year.

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

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

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

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

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.

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 ...

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.

Even in times when it's difficult to figure out, how do you go forward, art - and books - always help.

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

I can't really work on more than one thing at a time.

I'm much faster now. When you only have a certain amount of time to write, after a while you learn to use your time well or you stop writing.

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

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.

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

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

Books may well be the only true magic.

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

I read everything of Ray Bradbury when I was 12 or 13, and I think that's the most effective time to read Bradbury. He built such a moral world, where you have to make decisions and grow up.

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.

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

In "Faithful," Ray Bradbury is discussed a lot. The characters read "The Illustrated Man."

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

I love science fiction but especially his because it's so humane.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.