Quotes from The Dovekeepers

Alice Hoffman ·  504 pages

Rating: (57.9K votes)


“Here is the riddle of love: Everything it gives to you, it takes away.”
― Alice Hoffman, quote from The Dovekeepers


“I knew what it was to yearn for a life so distant it seemed that it had never been anything more than a dream.”
― Alice Hoffman, quote from The Dovekeepers


“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, quote from The Dovekeepers


“What men yearn for they often destroy.”
― Alice Hoffman, quote from The Dovekeepers


“We stood and watched as God abandoned us, and then we did the best we could.”
― Alice Hoffman, quote from The Dovekeepers



“Still anyone who trusts a serpent deserves its bite. The wise see a creature for what it is, not what it says it may be.”
― Alice Hoffman, quote from The Dovekeepers


“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.”
― Alice Hoffman, quote from The Dovekeepers


“I must keep my head and not give in to desire, for desire is what causes women to drown.”
― Alice Hoffman, quote from The Dovekeepers


“You are only worthy of what you prove yourself to be.”
― Alice Hoffman, quote from The Dovekeepers


“Perhaps it is possible to discover more in silence than in speech. Or perhaps it is only that those who are silent among us learn to listen.”
― Alice Hoffman, quote from The Dovekeepers



“You don't fight for peace sister,' Nahara told me, 'You embrace it.”
― Alice Hoffman, quote from The Dovekeepers


“This was what it meant to be human, to know that time moved and all things changed.”
― Alice Hoffman, quote from The Dovekeepers


“If we had paid attention, we would have understood there are some things in this world you cannot outrun.”
― Alice Hoffman, quote from The Dovekeepers


“Our rest is formed by our waking life and our waking life is formed by our sorrows.”
― Alice Hoffman, quote from The Dovekeepers


“I wept to think that life went on even when so much had been lost, that rain still fell and myrtle grew between the rocks.”
― Alice Hoffman, quote from The Dovekeepers



“I loved him even now, as he took a knife to my throat, as I drowned in blood, as I whispered "Cousin, you were wrong. We were born to live.”
― Alice Hoffman, quote from The Dovekeepers


“But now I understood that, although words were God's first creation, silence was closer to His divine spirit, and that prayers given in silence were infinitely greater than the thousands of words men might offer up to heaven.”
― Alice Hoffman, quote from The Dovekeepers


“But what we are given is taken as well, so that we know God's glory comes to us from His will alone.”
― Alice Hoffman, quote from The Dovekeepers


“Any weapon touched by a woman, even by accident, must be cleansed with both water and prayer so that her essence would not linger, diverting the warrior who might use it next, for even the faintest touch could bring lust to that man's heart. Perhaps that meant a woman who was well trained in arms would be the superior warrior, her attention never wavering from her task.”
― Alice Hoffman, quote from The Dovekeepers


“He wanted pain, I saw that in him, and what a man wants he will often manage to find.”
― Alice Hoffman, quote from The Dovekeepers



“No barrier was strong enough to keep out the movement of time.”
― Alice Hoffman, quote from The Dovekeepers


“That was the sorrow of it. He saw the light but never expected the darkness.”
― Alice Hoffman, quote from The Dovekeepers


“The river runs every shade of blue that has ever been known to humankind: ink and turquoise and lapis, indigo, teal, cerulean, and ultramarine.”
― Alice Hoffman, quote from The Dovekeepers


“The voice that arises out of the silence is something no one can imagine until it is heard. It roars when it speaks, it lies to you and convinces you, it steals from you and leaves you without a single word of comfort.”
― Alice Hoffman, quote from The Dovekeepers


“They say the truest beauty is in the harshest land and that God can be found there by those with open eyes.”
― Alice Hoffman, quote from The Dovekeepers



“The stars are reflected from within the black water in the cistern. I find comfort in the omen I glean from this: light in the darkness, truth when it seems there is none.”
― Alice Hoffman, quote from The Dovekeepers


“You are my armor and my sword, my faith and my tresure, everything I'm fighting for.”
― Alice Hoffman, quote from The Dovekeepers


“Just know that what's done can be undone, but what's undone can never again be.”
― Alice Hoffman, quote from The Dovekeepers


“Weapons are kept from women, but such a naming suggests that perhaps men fear our talents in war as well as our desire for peace.”
― Alice Hoffman, quote from The Dovekeepers


“They carried what was holy within them, for every man was a temple, and every prayer spoken could be heard by our Father above us.”
― Alice Hoffman, quote from The Dovekeepers



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About the author

Alice Hoffman
Born place: in New York, New York, The United States
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