Alice Hoffman Quotes
That was the way love was, invisible, there whether or not you wanted to see it or admit to it.
I was beginning to understand.My grandmother's love was cold because she was afraid of things;that was why everything had to be perfect.
My mother's blood that would last forever after. The blood of my brother, my grandfather, my father.
I've been a screenwriter for twenty-five years. Every one of my books have been optioned for movies and I have written a few of those screenplays.
My grandmother was overwhelmed by what was happening to us. She ahd moved back into the past because the here and the now was too terrible.
What did you see?' he asked then. Nothing,' I told him. 'Because nothing is what you wanted me to see, though the man on the table might disagree.
And then I understood that she had no idea what she'd done to my family. She thought love and hatred were equal.
I wept to think that life went on even when so much had been lost, that rain still fell and myrtle grew between the rocks.
It was as if hope had appeared out of nowhere to settle beside her and it wasn't going anywhere, it wasn't going to desert her now.
That is the joy of reading fiction: when all is said and done, the novel belongs to the reader and his or her imagination.
Some things you cannot wish away or think away. They become part of you when you remember them.
I never plot out my novels in terms of the tone of the book. Hopefully, once a story is begun it reveals itself
Even in times when it's difficult to figure out, how do you go forward, art - and books - always help
I don't really read as much as I used to. A lot of what I was looking for as an escape I find in writing. And the other thing is that I don't want to get into someone else's language when I'm working
Let everyone see the blood,' he said. 'Don't clean it up. That's the only way people remember.'... I could see the blood inside my head. It was with me forever, whether or not I wanted to forget.
But most important of all, she explained that it was all right to say 'No. I disagree.' that was a gift. I understood it was power. The power to think my own thoughts. The power to believe in myself.
This kind of knowing you can never tell to anyone. If you want us to survive, you cannot trust a soul'... 'Not for any reason on this earth. You can never tell.
Sally...can no longer think of love as a reality, or even as a possibility, however remote.
He believed in dreams, in endings that people told you could never happen, in disappointments reversed and luck that lasted.
Good fortune can take forever to get to you, but as it turns out, sorrow is as quick as a shot.
I saw the end of his life right there in that single moment. His pride, his decency, his secrets, his death.
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.
I hate it when people tell me the end of the story because my mother always read the last page of a novel first to see whether she wanted to read it. It was a strange reading habit.
I feel like my eyes are killing me at the end of the day and that I shouldn't use them.
My sorrow is I used to read all the time and now, as a writer, I don't have the time to read.
One of my favorites is "Time and Again" by Jack Finney. It takes place in Manhattan and goes back and forth between 1882 and the 1950s. It's really a cult book.
In "Faithful," Ray Bradbury is discussed a lot. The characters read "The Illustrated Man."
...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.
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.
But in battle you cannot tell another when it is his time to enter the World-to-Come, nor is it possible to keep any man in this world when he wishes to leave it behind.
Pride is a funny thing it can make what is truly worthless appear to be a treasure.
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.
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...
Perhaps I was drawn to stories in which people found their true desires because I was a stranger to myself.
Because we were Russian, sadness came naturally to us. But so did reading. In my family, a book was a life raft.
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.
