Alice Hoffman Quotes - Page 2

He started to look at me in a manner I recognized: it was the way I looked at a new book, one I had never read before, one that surprised me with all it had to say.

If she wanted to enter an otherworld, all she had to do was open a novel.

He carries books everywhere he goes so he won’t have to be bored by people.

Even as a small child, I understood that woman had secrets, and that some of these were only to be told to daughters. In this way we were bound together for eternity.

It was the sort of beauty you feel so deeply it becomes contagious and somehow makes you feel beautiful too.

It was amazing how many colors there were, all running into the gutter in a stream: a dozen shades of blue, twenty different reds, and all that black soot, like a nightmare given form, the insides of a heart, destroyed so easily, done away with before anyone could stop the damage, or salvage what was lost, or even try to save him.

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.

He wanted pain, I saw that in him, and what a man wants he will often manage to find.

Our rest is formed by our waking life and our waking life is formed by our sorrows.

I thought perhaps I had been wrong, too quick to judge the essence of a being by its appearance, still not fully understanding that, in the world God has given us, all things must change.

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.

They sealed this promise by hooking pinkies, the way they used to, long ago, when promises didn't hurt as much.

She didn't like being twelve. It felt like someplace between who she'd been and who she was about to be. It felt like no place at all.

They weren't true stories; they were better than that.

Interesting, but she could see that the boy didn't have a single lie in him. A very rare condition, especially for the male of the species.

Although I am no longer caught in the past, the future seems like a ridiculous thing to me. Try to catch it, hold it in your hand. It disappears every time.

... the past was what we carried with us, threaded to the future, and we decided whether to keep it close or let it go.

... a man always revealed his own inner story in his actions and expressions. A man's past deeds foretold his future and allowed anyone with half a brain to divine the path he would take.

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 intended because she would have done the very same thing if she'd had his courage. Nothing was going to break his fall.