Alice Hoffman Quotes

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

“The moon is always jealous of the heat of the day, just as the sun always longs for something dark and deep.”

“People want to ignore what they can’t understand. They’re looking for logic at any cost.”

“There are some things, after all, that Sally Owens knows for certain: Always throw spilled salt over your left shoulder. Keep rosemary by your garden gate. Add pepper to your mashed potatoes. Plant roses and lavender, for luck. Fall in love whenever you can.”

“Real love was dangerous, it got you from inside and held on tight, and if you didn’t let go fast enough you might be willing to do anything for its sake.”

“This insect, which marks off time, clicking like a clock, issues the sound no one ever wants to hear beside her beloved. A man’s tenure on earth is limited enough, but once the beetle’s ticking begins there’s no way to stop it; there’s no plug to pull, no pendulum to stop, no switch that will restore the time you once thought you had.”

“Tonight Sally and Gillian will concentrate on the rain, and tomorrow on the blue sky. They will do the best they can, but they will always be the girls they once were, dressed in their black coats, walking home through the fallen leaves to a house where no one could see into the windows, and no one could see out. At twilight they will always think of those women who would do anything for love. And in spite of everything, they will discover that this, above all others, is their favorite time of day. It’s the hour when they remember everything the aunts taught them. It’s the hour they’re most grateful for.”

“If there’s one thing Sally is now certain of, it’s how you can amaze yourself by the things you’re willing to do. Those are her daughters, the girls she wanted to lead normal lives, and she’s allowing them to stand over a pile of bones with a spaghetti pot filled mostly with lye. What has happened to her?”

″‘You can’t fall apart,’ Gillian would insist in her rich, urgent voice. ‘That’s my job,’ she’d say.”

“For more than two hundred years, the Owens women have been blamed for everything that has gone wrong in town. If a damp spring arrived, if cows in the pasture gave milk that was runny with blood, if a colt died of colic or a baby was born with a red birthmark stamped onto his cheek, everyone believed that fate must have been twisted, at least a little, by those women over on Magnolia Street.”

″‘Life is for the living,’ Gillian told her. ‘Life is what you make of it. Come on. Just listen to what I’m saying. Please.‘”

“Sometimes the most dangerous thing of all in matters of love was to be granted your heart’s desire.”

“How he realized, all at once, just how beautiful a woman can be.”

“She doesn’t brush her hair a thousand times at night, or pluck her eyebrows, or bathe with sesame oil so her skin will stay smooth. In a world without love, what is the point of any of that?”

“There’s one factor she forgot to figure into her anxiety equation, and that’s jealousy.”

“His grandfather told him once that witches caught you in this way- they knew how much most men love themselves and how deeply they’ll let themselves be drawn in, just for a glimpse of their own image. If you ever come face to face with a woman like this, his grandfather told him, turn and run... But of course, Gary has no intention of doing anything like that. He intends to go on drowning for a very long time.”

″‘Everything I do is wrong. You think I don’t know that? I’ve screwed up my entire existence, and everyone who’s close to me gets screwed right along with me.‘”

“For her whole life she has been measuring herself against her sister, and she’s not going to do that anymore. That is the gift Gillian has given her tonight, and for that she will always be grateful.”

“If a woman is in trouble, she should always wear blue for protection.”

“All the same, he’s been making a mess of things. Every time he breathes, horrible things come out of his mouth: Little green frogs. Drops of blood. Chocolates wrapped in pretty foil, but with poisonous centers that give off a foul odor each time he breaks one in half. He’s wrecking things just by snapping his fingers. He’s making things fall apart.”