Alice Hoffman Love Quotes & Sayings

Because love is an act of will. You think it will just happen, but you have to make it so. Even when it's gone wrong. Wait and see. If love doesn't come to you, you have to go find it. — Alice Hoffman

Love has nothing to do with time or space. — Alice Hoffman

You couldn't see love, or touch it, or taste it, yet it could destroy you and leave you in the dark, chasing after your own destiny. — Alice Hoffman

'The Dovekeepers' is a fantastic novel written by Alice Hoffman; it was a bestselling novel, and I fell in love with the book and bought the rights to it. — Roma Downey

Love wasn't rational; there was no proof that it even existed outside of people's imaginings. — Alice Hoffman

Once I knew nothing about McKay and now I knew everything about him. This seemed as good as any reason for not walking out the door. There are so many ways to stop the knowing, and I tried them all. I tried silence, I tried heroin, I tried calling it love. And then I stopped trying to call my dumbness any one of ten thousand names. — Alice Hoffman

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

She allowed me to understand I'd done everything I could for her, and that I, and everyone who loved her, had to step away and go on living.

Now I know what she wanted from me on the day she told me she was afraid. It was exactly what I wanted when I had cancer and I thought I was going to die. I should have sat down next to her, put my arms around her, and told her that I loved her. That's all anyone wants. It took me a long time to figure this out. It's a complicated human puzzle. But it's never too late to know that love is all you need. — Alice Hoffman

It's not easy. It never is. That is the secret our parents fail to tell us, out of kindness and love, but it's a secret we need to know. Everything that begins, ends. Everything beautiful disappears. — Alice Hoffman

You were the one who taught me that love was never what we expected it to be and that it was all that we needed. — Alice Hoffman

For love changes everything and forces us into lives we never imagined we might lead — Alice Hoffman

He was in love, and people in that condition did stupid, unfathomable things. They were all flawed, every single one. — Alice Hoffman

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. — Alice Hoffman

I dream of a love that even time will lie down and be still for. — Alice Hoffman

When all is said and done, the weather and love are the two elements about which one can never be sure. — Alice Hoffman

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. — Alice Hoffman

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

I feel more influenced in my own work by dreams than I do by other writers' works in a way. Or by popular culture, movies - what else is there to write about than love and loss? — Alice Hoffman

What's the difference between love and obsession? Didn't both make you stay up all night, wandering the streets, a victim of your own imagination, your own heartbeat? Didn't you fall into both, headfirst into quicksand? Wasn't every man in love a fool and every woman a slave?
Love was like rain: it turned to ice, or it disappeared. Now you saw it, now you couldn't find it no matter how hard you might search. Love evaporated; obsession was realer; it hurt, like a pin in your bottom, a stone in your shoe. It didn't go away in the blink of an eye. A morning phone call filled with regret. A letter that said, 'Dear you, good-bye from me'. Obsession tasted like something familiar. Something you'd known your whole life. It settled and lurked; it stayed with you. — Alice Hoffman

That's the way love sounds, my mother told me. You think it should feel like honey, but instead it cuts like a knife. — Alice Hoffman

Being human means losing everything we love best in the world," she murmured as she released me. "But would you ask to be anything else? — Alice Hoffman

In a world of sorrow, love was an act of will. All you needed were the right ingredients. — Alice Hoffman

Maybe some love was guaranteed. Maybe it fit inside you and around you like skin and bones. — Alice Hoffman

She wishes he would come to her tonight, climb in through the window to lie down beside her and explain how it's possible to love someone so much and still manage to carry on when you have to let them go. — Alice Hoffman

Love was never a mistake,even when it wasn't returned. — Alice Hoffman

She knew it the way people say they know they are about to be hit by lightning, yet remain powerless to run, unable to avoid their fate. She panicked, as anyone might have when disparate parts of her life were about to crash into each other, certain to leave a path of anguish and debris. It was true that devotion could be lost as quickly as it was found, which was why some people insisted that love letters be written in ink. How easy it was for even the sweetest words to evaporate, only to be rewritten as impulse and infatuation might dictate. How unfortunate that love could not be taught or trained, like a seal or a dog. Instead it was a wolf on the prowl, with a mind of its own, and it made its own way, undeterred by the damage done. Love like this could turn honest people into liars and cheats, as it now did ... — Alice Hoffman

Everything we knew condemned us, and our questioning condemned us most of all. Knowledge was the way of our people, and knowledge was dangerous. It was the first thing that freed you and the thing that put you in peril. It was the key to the ten gates. I saw them clearly now, each and every one, the gates that were there for me. Ashes, Bones, Grass, Heart, Stone, Love, Sorrow, Blood, Earth, Sky. — Alice Hoffman

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

Some things, when they change, never do return to the way they once were. Butterflies for instance, and women who've been in love with the wrong man too often. — Alice Hoffman

I knew that my brother would still be a part of this world no matter what happened next. I felt my love for him so deeply that my blood seemed to flow down the street to him. My blood sang out my prayer for Luis even while he was still living in our world. — Alice Hoffman

What was desire anyway, when examined in the clear light of day? Was it the way a woman searched for her clothes in the morning, or the manner in which a man might watch her sit before the mirror and comb her hair? Was it a pale November dawn, when ice formed on windowpanes and crows called from the bare black trees? Or was it the way a person might yield to the night, setting forth on a path so unexpected that daylight would never again be completely clear? — Alice Hoffman

A fortuneteller at a magicians' convention in Atlantic City once told him that when he fell in love it would be forever, and he laughed at the notion, but now he sees that reading was completely on target. — Alice Hoffman

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. — Alice Hoffman

You will be amazed to find how easy it is to lie, even to those you love best. — Alice Hoffman

Love ambushed you, it lay in wait, dormant for days or years. It was the red thread, the peach stone, the kiss, the forgiveness. It came after you, it escaped you, it was invisible, it was everything. — Alice Hoffman

He thought about how love could move you in ways you wouldn't have imagined, one foot in front of the other, even when you thought you had nothing left inside. — Alice Hoffman

Love is ancient and mysterious and you can't mess with it. If you do it just backfires and you meet with disaster. — Alice Hoffman

love was never a regret. — Alice Hoffman

Love like this wasn't what he'd planned or wanted or expected, surely it was indeed a trap, for even when you tried to run away, it followed you through the grass and lay down beside you, it overtook common sense and willpower. — Alice Hoffman

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

(Love) walks up to you,and when it does, you need to recognize it for what it is and, perhaps more important, for what it might become. — Alice Hoffman

Love someone and they're yours forever, no matter how much time intervenes, that's what Margaret Grey knew. The sky will always be blue; the wind will always rise up across the meadow and thread its way through the grass. — Alice Hoffman

If anything, love was like light, illuminating what no one would have ever guessed was there in the darkness. — Alice Hoffman

Well, maybe that's what love is, as state of mind ready to grace anyone willing to accept it. Anyone who cares. — Alice Hoffman

I think love is a huge factor in fiction and in real life. Is there a risk? Always. In fiction and in life. — Alice Hoffman

I read Greek myths. I read about far off places, Venice and Paris. I read about men who searched for things they could not find at home, and women who fell in love with the wrong person and waited for the arrival of their beloved for so long that a year was no different from a single day. The same thing was happening to me. Years were passing. I was already a woman, and I still wasn't done reading. — Alice Hoffman

You are the one who taught me that love was never what we expected it to be and that it was all we needed. For that, and for a thousand other things, I send my gratitude. — Alice Hoffman

Love is the one thing that's not easy to find. It's an achievement, Eddie, to feel such a glorious emotion, whether it's returned or not. Some men never do. — Alice Hoffman

She slept beneath a tree that night, sitting upright. She imagined she would have been scared for her life out in the open, for she was often terrified in her own room at home, even after double-locking the windows and covering the glass with quilts. Instead, she felt an odd calm spirit here in the wilderness. Was this the way people felt at the instant they leapt into rivers and streams? Was it like this when you fell in love, stood on the train tracks, went to a country where no one spoke your language? That was the country she was in most of the time, a place where people heard what she said but not what she meant. She wanted to be known, but no one knew her. — Alice Hoffman

You want to know what love is? Its the thing that ruins you. — Alice Hoffman

You know what love is? ... It's what you least expect. — Alice Hoffman

Maybe a hundred years ago our people should have run away from this place, I said ...
And then run from the next place and the next place and the place after that? You run once, what makes you think you won't have to run all the rest of your life? ... We love moment to moment ... Everything changes. One minute we are part of the river, and the next we are joined with the sea. — Alice Hoffman

When I walk, I walk with you. Where I go, you're with me always. — Alice Hoffman

Those you love will not drown or burn. They will fly away.' ... 'Now we both have people we love who are like birds. They have flown far from anything in this world that can hurt them. They're flying away still. — Alice Hoffman

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. — Alice Hoffman

Even now as the graves of these women went untended, and their passings unmourned, the seeds they had scattered turned the hillsides red and orange from May to September. Some called the pirates' bounty flame trees, but to us they were known as flamboyant trees, for no one could ignore their glorious blooms, with flowers that were larger than a man's open hand. Every time I saw them I thought of these lost women. That was what happened if you waited for love. — Alice Hoffman

He knew exactly how to hit a woman, so that the marks hardly showed. He knew how to kiss her , too, so that her heart began to race and she'd start to think forgiveness with every breath. It's amazing the places that love will carry you. It's astounding to discover just how far you're willing to go. — Alice Hoffman

She feels her love inside her as if it were as tangible as blood and bones. They'll — Alice Hoffman

You don't forget the people you love," she told him. "That's what I've realized. They just get farther away. Like a spyglass turned around. Annie to Pete — Alice Hoffman

Here is the riddle of love: Everything it gives to you, it takes away. — Alice Hoffman

If we had no hurt and no sin to speak of, we'd be angels, and amgels can't love the way men and women do. — Alice Hoffman

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. — Alice Hoffman

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. — Alice Hoffman

You know what love is? Maureen said to me that day...it's what you least expect. — Alice Hoffman

what does love matter in a world where it's so easy to hurt someone? — Alice Hoffman

Fourth time's the charm, she says to people who ask her what the secret of a happy marriage is, but that's not the way she feels about it. She knows now that when you don't lose yourself in the bargain, you find you have double the love you started with, and that's one recipe that can't be tampered with. — Alice Hoffman

Among men and women, those in love do not always announce themselves with declarations and vows. But they are the ones who weep when you're gone. Who miss you every single night, especially when the sky is so deep and beautiful, and the ground so very cold. — Alice Hoffman

Margaret thought of all she knew for certain, that day would always follow night that love was never wasted nor was it lost. — Alice Hoffman

That's still the best reading experience: falling in love with a book I meet by accident. — Alice Hoffman

But chains made out of blood and memory were a thousand times more difficult to sever than those made of steel, and the past could overtake a person if she wasn't careful"
"The day had begun, cool and clear and absolutely impossible to avoid"
"Being a physician is like working on a machine that keeps breaking down, time after time"
"Honesty was like a stone, dropped and irretrievable once it was spoken aloud"
"Love was like that, like a dream you didn't quite understand, one in which you didn't necessarily know what you were looking at until it was right in front of you"
"adolescence is what makes the person — Alice Hoffman

He fell in love with the way she closed her eyes, long before he fell in love with her. — Alice Hoffman

But love was not about practice or preparation, it was pure chance; if you took your time with it you ran the risk of having it evaporate before it had even begun — Alice Hoffman

Love like this was all consuming. I found that I was jealous of the strangest things - sunlight, streets, curtains, even her clothing, anything that was close to her. — Alice Hoffman

The only people out at this hour were ones who couldn't sleep, those haunted by one thing or another: love thwarted, love lost, love thrown away. They were the sort of people who didn't want to be noticed, who wanted to slip through shadows, be alone with their despair. — Alice Hoffman

You rescue something and you're responsible for it. But maybe that's what love is. Maybe it's like a hit-and-run accident; it smashes you before you can think. You do it no matter the cost and you keep on running — Alice Hoffman

Sometimes I feel like there's a hole inside of me, an emptiness that at times seems to burn. I think if you lifted my heart to your ear, you could probably hear the ocean. The moon tonight, there's a circle around it. Sign of trouble not far behind. I have this dream of being whole. Of not going to sleep each night, wanting. But still sometimes, when the wind is warm or the crickets sing... I dream of a love that even time will lie down and be still for. I just want someone to love me. I want to be seen. I don't know. Maybe I had my happiness. I don't want to believe it but, there is no man, Gilly. Only that moon. — Alice Hoffman

What she feels for him is so deep, she aches. She supposes this is what people refer to when they say the pangs of love, as if your innermost joy cannot help but cause you anguish as well. — Alice Hoffman

Before she realized he was next to her, he had placed his hands over hers on the countertop, then hooped his fingers through hers. Gretel looked up at him, so startled she might as well have been shot.
'I just wanted to wake you up', he said.
Which is exactly what he did. One look at him and her heart was racing. One look, and whatever had been before was all over. — Alice Hoffman

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. — Alice Hoffman

She was partial to emeralds; she said they were the single thing that remained constant, always green, always the same ... My mother had been right, it was one thing that lasted, the one thing we could depend on. Other than our love for each other, it was all we had right now. — Alice Hoffman

Do you ever just put your arms out and just spin and spin and spin? Well, that's what love is like; everything inside of you tells you to stop before you fall, but for some reason you just keep going. — Alice Hoffman

And what of monsters? Can they love too? We know quite well they can. For we know that they do. — Alice Hoffman

But can you measure someone's love? I want to know. You think you can measure love? She's kind not to laugh at me ... No scale would be strong enough, she tells me. It would break to pieces under the weight. — Alice Hoffman

...It's pure vanity to presume that love exists only on our terms. A red lead may be the universe for the tortoise beetle or the ladybird. A single touch the ecstasy of a lifetime. (180) — Alice Hoffman

Somewhere there was a book of love, with all the symptoms written down in red ink: Dizziness and Desire. A tendency to stare at the night sky, searching for a message that might be found up above. A lurching in the pit of the stomach, as if something much too sweet had been eaten. The ability to hear the quietest sounds--snails munching the lettuce leaves, moths drinking nectar from the overripe pears on the tree by the fence, a rabbit trembling in ivy-just in case he might be there, which was what mattered all along. Real hunger, just to see him, as if this would ever be enough. — Alice Hoffman

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. — Alice Hoffman

Love is worth the sum of itself, and nothing more. — Alice Hoffman

Young Sally Owens: He will hear my call a mile away. He will whistle my favorite song. He can ride a pony backwards.
Young Gillian Owens: What are you doing?
Young Sally Owens: Summoning up a true love spell called Amas Veritas. He can flip pancakes in the air. He'll be marvelously kind. And his favorite shape will be a star. And he'll have one green eye and one blue.
Young Gillian Owens: Thought you never wanted to fall in love.
Young Sally Owens: That's the point. The guy I dreamed of doesn't exist. And if he doesn't exist I'll never die of a broken heart. — Alice Hoffman

I love so many books and authors that it's hard to name just a few, but I'm always particularly excited when new books by Alice Hoffman, John Crowley, Joanne Harris, Elizabeth Knox, and Patricia McKillip come out. (And, of course, books by Ellen [Kushner], and Holly [Black], and the rest of the Bordertown crew!) I'm impatiently looking forward to Susanna Clarke's next book too.
Aside from writing and reading, my favorite things to do are paint, walk in the countryside with my dog, and listen to music
especially when it's live and it's played by friends. Fortunately there's a lot of live music where I live. — Terri Windling

I wrote to find beauty and purpose, to know that love is possible and lasting and real, to see day lilies and swimming pools, loyalty and devotion, even though my eyes were closed, and all that surrounded me was a darkened room. I wrote because that was who I was at the core, and if I was too damaged to walk around the block, I was lucky all the same. Once I got to my desk, once I started writing, I still believed anything was possible. — Alice Hoffman

And then I understood that she had no idea what she'd done to my family. She thought love and hatred were equal. — Alice Hoffman

You are my armor and my sword, my faith and my tresure, everything I'm fighting for. — Alice Hoffman

Trouble is just like love, after all; it comes in unannounced and takes over before you've had a chance to reconsider, or even to think. — Alice Hoffman

Everything was red, the air, the sun, whatever I looked at. Except for him. I fell in love with someone who was human. I watched him walk through the hills and come back in the evening when his work was through. I saw things no woman would see: that he knew how to cry, that he was alone. I cast myself at him, like a fool, but he didn't see me. And then one day he noticed I was beautiful and he wanted me. He broke me off and took me with him, in his hands, and I didn't care that I was dying until I actually was. — Alice Hoffman

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. — Alice Hoffman

Those boys at the counter are too dreamy and young to do anything but drool as they watch Gillian. And, to her credit, Gillian is especially kind to them, even when Ephraim, the cook, suggests she kick them out. She understands that theirs might just be the last hearts she will break. When you're thirty-six and tired, when you've been living in places where the temperature rising to a hundred and ten and the air is so dry you have to use gallons of moisturizer, when you've been smacked around, late at night, by a man who loves bourbon, you start to realize that everything is limited, including your own appeal. You begin to look at young boys with tenderness, since they know so little and think they know so much. You watch teenage girls and feel shivers up and down your arms - those poor creatures don't know the first thing about time or agony or the price they're going to have to pay for just about anything. — Alice Hoffman

You build your world around someone, and then what happens when he disappears? Where do you go- into pieces, into atoms, into the arms of another man? You go shopping, you cook dinner, you work odd hours, you make love to someone else on June nights. But you're not really there, you're someplace else where there is blue sky and a road you don't recognize. If you squint your eyes, you think you see him, in the shadows, beyond the trees. You always imagine that you see him, but he's never there. It's only his spirit, that's what's there beneath the bed when you kiss your husband, there when you send your daughter off to school. It's in your coffee cup, your bathwater, your tears. Unfinished business always comes back to haunt you, and a man who swears he'll love you forever isn't finished with you until he's done. — Alice Hoffman

I wrote Seventh Heaven for my mother who I miss every day
From Facebook post — Alice Hoffman

I know who you are in your heart,' Andres said. 'That's all that matters.' And that was it. That was the moment. Now I knew how I would feel if I ever lost him. That was how you knew love. My mother had told me that. All you had to do was imagine your life without the other person, and if the thought alone made you shiver, then you knew. — Alice Hoffman

Helplessness and anger make for predictable behavior: Children are certain to shove each other and pull hair, teenagers will call each other names and cry, and grown women who are sisters will say words so cruel that each syllable will take on the form of a snake, although such a snake often circles in on itself to eat its own tail once the words are said aloud. — Alice Hoffman