Quotes by Alice Hoffman

“He stepped off the pavement like a man jumping off a bridge, as calm as a swimmer with an ocean out below. Lucy had known what he was going to do the instant their eyes met. She'd know what he inte...”

“People expected certain things of me: assistance, silence, comfort. They had no idea who I was.”

“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 m...”

“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.”

“That was the sorrow of it. He saw the light but never expected the darkness.”

“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...”

“My grief was cold. It was nothing to share. It was nothing to speak about, nothing to feel.”

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

“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.”

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

“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...”

“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 shak...”

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

“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...”

“She’d bought a blue notebook in the pharmacy to write down her aunt’s remedies. Star tulip to understand dreams, bee balm for a restful sleep, black mustard seed to repel nightmares, remedies that ...”

“We can offer women what they want most of all, cures for the most common ailments of this world... When children are ailing or babies refuse to be born, when men are unfaithful, when the sky is emp...”

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

“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”

“Certain things need not be said, and there’s nothing, not a whisper, prayer, not a sacrifice, not a payment of any price, that would change what’s about to happen.”

“I understood that fate could not be eluded forever; it came on leathery wings, swooping through the darkness like the bats in the orchards.”