Quotes by Alice Hoffman

It had made her too helpless, because thats what love did. There was no way around it and no way to fight it. Now if she lost, she lost everything.

You should never trust a liar so you should never trust a man of honor. Those two are the worst of mankind.

She understood love. What destroys you saves you, she had told me.

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.

Sam said, Hey, you want to get high? Amy had taken his words to mean You are so beautiful I am undone by you.

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.

I wasnt good company, that was true, and people avoided me, but that was all right. I was too busy dreaming.

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.

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

Demons were said to be cruel, but a demon would never have been so brutal as this. A demon merely called you by name, threw his arms around you, whispered his plight, understood yours, then took you for his own.

Heres the thing about luck...you dont know if its good or bad until you have some perspective.

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.

Crying wasnt like riding a bike. Give it up, and you quickly forget how its done.

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; hed 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. Annes, 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.

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

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

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.

Love someone and theyre yours forever

This was the purest instant he had ever experienced; the way he felt inside right then. If he had to be trapped in a forever he would choose this very moment. The black night, the few yellow leaves still clinging to the bare trees, the beautiful dark-eyed woman drinking whiskey, the way she gazed at him, the way she made him feel.

For six months I did what women do: I waited. This is what women are taught to be good at. Its said that a womans 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.