“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, quote from Here on Earth
“When all is said and done, the weather and love are the two elements about which one can never be sure.”
― Alice Hoffman, quote from Here on Earth
“The sky is already purple; the first few stars have appeared, suddenly, as if someone had thrown a handful of silver across the edge of the world.”
― Alice Hoffman, quote from Here on Earth
“When the cold comes to New England it arrives in sheets of sleet and ice. In December, the wind wraps itself around bare trees and twists in between husbands and wives asleep in their beds. It shakes the shingles from the roofs and sifts through cracks in the plaster. The only green things left are the holly bushes and the old boxwood hedges in the village, and these are often painted white with snow. Chipmunks and weasels come to nest in basements and barns; owls find their way into attics. At night,the dark is blue and bluer still, as sapphire of night.”
― Alice Hoffman, quote from Here on Earth
“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.”
― Alice Hoffman, quote from Here on Earth
“It's not the lie that's the problem; it's the distance the lie forges between you.”
― Alice Hoffman, quote from Here on Earth
“That is how you know you've left childhood behind-when you wish for time to go backward.”
― Alice Hoffman, quote from Here on Earth
“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, quote from Here on Earth
“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, quote from Here on Earth
“This day is going to be awful. It's the sort of day you wouldn't mind losing completely, even if it meant your life would be twenty-four hours shorter.”
― Alice Hoffman, quote from Here on Earth
“Young people believe that regret is something you will never feel if you simply do as you please, but sometimes it is a matter of degree.”
― Alice Hoffman, quote from Here on Earth
“Do what you want, do what you will, do what you have to, do what you think you cannot.”
― Alice Hoffman, quote from Here on Earth
“...early on Monday evening, when the sky was the color of a velvet ribbon falling over the hills.”
― Alice Hoffman, quote from Here on Earth
“...and so many orchards circled the village that on some crisp October afternoons the whole wold smelled like pie.”
― Alice Hoffman, quote from Here on Earth
“She truly believed that she carried her own fate in the palm of her hand, as if destiny was nothing more than a green marble or a robin's egg, a trinket any silly girl could scoop up and keep. She believed that all you wanted, you would eventually receive, and that fate was a force which worked with you, not against you.”
― Alice Hoffman, quote from Here on Earth
“History is personal, Gwen understands that now. All you are seeing is what's before you, the rest is guesswork.”
― Alice Hoffman, quote from Here on Earth
“Mrs. Dale was a good woman, Hollis will grant her that. A busybody and a pain in the neck, but she never judged what she didn't understand and that Hollis knows, is rare. Unlike Alan and the boys in the village, she treated him fairly, but that doesn't mean he has to moan and bellyache down at the funeral parlor. Ashes to ashes, that's all there is. If you can't change a fact of life, then be smart enough to walk away from it.”
― Alice Hoffman, quote from Here on Earth
“Children would beg for a peppermint drop each time he walked into town, and they'd follow behind, asking for a second and a third. When he died suddenly, while working late at his office, every boy and girl in the village reported smelling mint in the night air, as if somehing sweet had passed them right by.”
― Alice Hoffman, quote from Here on Earth
“...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, quote from Here on Earth
“Some people know the exact moment when they've lost everything. They can look back and see it plain as day and for the life of them they can't understand why they didn't spot the situation as it was happening.”
― Alice Hoffman, quote from Here on Earth
“That is how you know you've left childhood behind - when you wish for time to go backward.”
― Alice Hoffman, quote from Here on Earth
“...he wants to be completely in control. In a way, it's a relief. ...[she] doesn't have to think when she's with him, or make a decision, or state a preference.”
― Alice Hoffman, quote from Here on Earth
“Love has made him surprise himself. He would never have believed it possible, but it's turned out that he is a man who can walk up to a closed door on a murky November day, wearing his one good suit, and knock without hesitation, waiting while the rain comes down around him, even though he's not wanted. He can do this and not think twice, just the way he can spend hours watching a wounded cedar beetle and weep over its rare beauty, as well as its agony.
Richard is certain that other species fall in love - primates, of course, and canines - but he has wondered about his beetles. There are people who would surely get a chuckle out of the mere suggestion, but in Richard's opinion it's pure vanity to presume that love exists only on our terms. A red leaf may be the universe for the tortoise beetle or the ladybird. A single touch the ecstasy of a lifetime. And so, here he is, in love despite everything. It is he, stupider than any beetle, and far more obstinate, who has traveled three thousand miles, even though he fully expects to be turned away.”
― Alice Hoffman, quote from Here on Earth
“History is personal . . . All that you are seeing is what's before you, the rest is guesswork.”
― Alice Hoffman, quote from Here on Earth
Alice Hoffman
Born place: in New York, New York, The United States
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“I would have done anything to stop the hitting. Anything. So much for human dignity, I think, a few whacks in the ribs and you’re calling a fat guy God and eating soil at his request.”
― George Saunders, quote from CivilWarLand in Bad Decline
“You can't always rely on taking the pain. You need to learn to avoid it.”
― Meg Collett, quote from Fear University
“This wine is too good for toast-drinking, my dear. You don't want to mix emotions up with a wine like that. You lose the taste.”
― Ernest Hemingway, quote from Fiesta
“...we can do some historical research to see how our ancestors lived. We will quickly discover that we are living in what to them would have been a dream world that we tend to take for granted things that our ancestors had to live without...”
― William B. Irvine, quote from A Guide to the Good Life: The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy
“Most addicts here, he says, come with an empty glass inside them;66 when they take heroin, the glass becomes full, but only for a few hours, and then it drains down to nothing again. The purpose of this program is to gradually build a life for the addict so they can put something else into that empty glass: a social network, a job, some daily pleasures. If you can do that, it will mean that even as the heroin drains, you are not left totally empty. Over time, as your life has more in it, the glass will contain more and more, so it will take less and less heroin to fill it up. And in the end, there may be enough within you that you feel full without any heroin at all.”
― Johann Hari, quote from Chasing the Scream: The First and Last Days of the War on Drugs
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