Alice Hoffman Quotes

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

The evening had turned sweet and blue.

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.

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.

Books may well be the only true magic.

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

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

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

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.

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.

How could I have been so stupid to ignore everything I’d had in my life? The color red alone was worth kingdoms.

Young Sally Owens: He will hear my call a mile away. He will whistle my favorite song. He can ride a pony backwards. Young Gillian Owens: What are you doing? Young Sally Owens: Summoning up a true love spell called Amas Veritas. He can flip pancakes in the air. He'll be marvelously kind. And his favorite shape will be a star. And he'll have one green eye and one blue. Young Gillian Owens: Thought you never wanted to fall in love. Young Sally Owens: That's the point. The guy I dreamed of doesn't exist. And if he doesn't exist I'll never die of a broken heart.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

She knows where she's going, and what she has to do. She could, after all, find her way to Route 95 South blindfolded. She could do it in the dark, in fair weather or foul; she can do it even when it seems she will run out of gas. 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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.