Alice Hoffman Quotes - Page 7

Burn me. Drown me. Tell me lies. I will still be who I am.

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.

How could I tell the doctor what was wrong with me? I didn't understand it myself. I couldn't articulate the pain; it was the pain of nothingness. My fear was of the weather, the atmosphere, the very air. What good did safety tips do me now? 'Avoid water, metal objects, rooftops; stay off the telephone in a storm, don't think glass can protect you; even if a storm was 8 miles away, you're still not safe from a strike. Avoid life perhaps that was the answer. The number one safety tip, stay away from it all.

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.

That was the way love was, invisible, there whether or not you wanted to see it or admit to it.

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.

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.

If I hadn't learned my lesson, I would have wished we could stay there forever. But I knew better now. We'd seen what we'd come to see. The way to trick death. Breathe in. Breathe out. Watch as it all rises upwards, black and blue into the even bluer sky.

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.

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.

I always quit at three when my kids come home from school so I feel pretty spoiled

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.

Sometimes they would sit in the parlor together, both reading – in entirely separate worlds, to be sure, but joined somehow. When this happened, other people in the family couldn't bring themselves to disturb them. All that could be heard in the parlor was the sound of pages, turning.

Sally...can no longer think of love as a reality, or even as a possibility, however remote.

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

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

The frightened walk away when love is difficult. I know that now. You have to be willing to give everything away. You have to be willing to end up with nothing. Only then will your heart be whole.

In the darkest hour of winter, when the starlings had all flown away, Gretel Samuelson fell in love. It happened the way things are never supposed to happen in real life, like a sledgehammer, like a bolt from out of the blue. One minute she was a seventeen year-old senior in high school waiting for a Sicilian pizza to go; the next one she was someone whose whole world had exploded, leaving her adrift in the Milky Way, so far from earth she was walking on stars.

She was so busy forgetting, she couldn't take a single step into the future.

He'd thought he was lost, but now he recognized that eternity was around him, like salt from a shaker or stars in the sky.

...but now the worst crime was pretending to be something you were not.

Jill and I have known each other our whole lives. One house separates our houses but we act as if it doesn't exist. We met before we were born and we'll probably still know each other after we die. At least, that's the way we're planning it.

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.

Only her death could prove her innocence; a circle of impossible, deathly judgement.

A boy who is trouble is something entirely different as a man.