“When I walk, I walk with you. Where I go, you're with me always.”
― Alice Hoffman, quote from The Story Sisters
“Sometimes words drew blood, they cut your tongue, they made you know things you couldn't unknow. ”
― Alice Hoffman, quote from The Story Sisters
“Some stories stayed with you even when you wanted to forget them.”
― Alice Hoffman, quote from The Story Sisters
“I can hurt myself more than anyone else can," she told her sister. "I can do it with my eyes closed.”
― Alice Hoffman, quote from The Story Sisters
“Maybe some love was guaranteed. Maybe it fit inside you and around you like skin and bones.”
― Alice Hoffman, quote from The Story Sisters
“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.”
― Alice Hoffman, quote from The Story Sisters
“In a world of sorrow, love was an act of will. All you needed were the right ingredients.”
― Alice Hoffman, quote from The Story Sisters
“They weren't true stories; they were better than that.”
― Alice Hoffman, quote from The Story Sisters
“He was in love, and people in that condition did stupid, unfathomable things. They were all flawed, every single one.”
― Alice Hoffman, quote from The Story Sisters
“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, quote from The Story Sisters
“Another world must surely exist somewhere one where she would be known in some deep way that was far beyond words.”
― Alice Hoffman, quote from The Story Sisters
“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, quote from The Story Sisters
“A boy who is trouble is something entirely different as a man.”
― Alice Hoffman, quote from The Story Sisters
“That was the way love was, invisible, there whether or not you wanted to see it or admit to it.”
― Alice Hoffman, quote from The Story Sisters
“The nature of love had totally escaped her until now. She had thought that if you lost it, you could never get it back, like a stone thrown down a well. But it was like the water at the bottom of the well, there when you can't even see it, shifting in the dark.”
― Alice Hoffman, quote from The Story Sisters
“...even though she felt a wave of dread. If they knew she was nervous, she'd be at their mercy. But if they thought she was ice they'd be afraid to touch her.”
― Alice Hoffman, quote from The Story Sisters
“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, quote from The Story Sisters
“Your grand daughter may not be looking for trouble, but trouble is looking for her.”
― Alice Hoffman, quote from The Story Sisters
“What people called the truth seemed worthless to her; what was it but a furtive, bruised story to convince yourself life was worth living.”
― Alice Hoffman, quote from The Story Sisters
“What was a demon but a lost soul, one that had been forced to use his skills to survive.”
― Alice Hoffman, quote from The Story Sisters
“Demons were said to be cruel, but a demon would never have been so brutal as this. A demon merely called you by name, threw his arms around you, whispered his plight, understood yours, then took you for his own.”
― Alice Hoffman, quote from The Story Sisters
“If you believed in something strongly and give it enough credence, it could appear right in front of you. Though it had been created in your mind, it would claim a presence in the real world, a monster at your door, a demon pulling at your coat sleeve.”
― Alice Hoffman, quote from The Story Sisters
“If she wanted to enter an otherworld, all she had to do was open a novel.”
― Alice Hoffman, quote from The Story Sisters
“He still wanted to believe that people could survive their misfortunes. He believed that was all anyone had.”
― Alice Hoffman, quote from The Story Sisters
“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, quote from The Story Sisters
“In the human world you had to choose your loyalties carefully. You had to see through to someone's heart.”
― Alice Hoffman, quote from The Story Sisters
“...the summer of the gypsy moths when all the trees in their yard were bare, the leaves chewed by caterpillars. You could hear crunching in the night. You could see silvery cocoon webbing in porch rafter and strung across stop signs.”
― Alice Hoffman, quote from The Story Sisters
“...the eldest who had the misfortune of being too beautiful and had a far off look in her eyes. Madame Cohen had seen what could happen to girls like that, they were picked off like fruit on a tree, devoured by blackbirds.”
― Alice Hoffman, quote from The Story Sisters
“Meg was a great reader and was never without a book; while walking to school she often had one open in her hands, so engrossed she would sometimes trip while navigating familiar streets.”
― Alice Hoffman, quote from The Story Sisters
“Pete wondered if the endings of things gathered in the corners of a room, hanging down like a spider's web, waiting.”
― Alice Hoffman, quote from The Story Sisters
Alice Hoffman
Born place: in New York, New York, The United States
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“Cigarettes to be fetched for me from the canteen,' said Rubashov.
'Have you got prison vouchers?'
'My money was taken from me on my arrival,' said Rubashov.
'Then you must wait until it has been changed for vouchers.'
'How long will that take in this model establishment of yours?' asked Rubashov.
'You can write a letter of complaint,' said the old man.
'You know quite well that I have neither paper nor pencil,' said Rubashov.
'To buy writing materials you have to have vouchers,' said the warder.”
― Arthur Koestler, quote from Darkness at Noon
“Before my birth there was infinite time, and after my death, inexhaustible time. I never thought of it before: I'd been living luminously between two eternities of darkness.”
― Orhan Pamuk, quote from My Name is Red
“EDMUND (with alcoholic talkativeness): You've just told me some high spots in your memories. Want to hear mine? They're all connected with the sea. Here's one. When I was on the Squarehead square rigger, bound for Buenos Aires. Full moon in the Trades. The old hooker driving fourteen knots. I lay on the bowsprit, facing astern, with the water foaming into spume under me, the masts with every sail white in the moonlight, towering high above me. I became drunk with the beauty and singing rhythm of it, and for a moment I lost myself -- actually lost my life. I was set free! I dissolved in the sea, became white sails and flying spray, became beauty and rhythm, became moonlight and the ship and the high dim-starred sky! I belonged, without past or future, within peace and unity and a wild joy, within something greater than my own life, or the life of Man, to Life itself! To God, if you want to put it that way. Then another time, on the American Line, when I was lookout on the crow's nest in the dawn watch. A calm sea, that time. Only a lazy ground swell and a slow drowsy roll of the ship. The passengers asleep and none of the crew in sight. No sound of man. Black smoke pouring from the funnels behind and beneath me. Dreaming, not keeping lookout, feeling alone, and above, and apart, watching the dawn creep like a painted dream over the sky and sea which slept together. Then the moment of ecstatic freedom came. The peace, the end of the quest, the last harbor, the joy of belonging to a fulfillment beyond men's lousy, pitiful, greedy fears and hopes and dreams! And several other times in my life, when I was swimming far out, or lying alone on a beach, I have had the same experience. Became the sun, the hot sand, green seaweed anchored to a rock, swaying in the tide. Like a saint's vision of beatitude. Like the veil of things as they seem drawn back by an unseen hand. For a second you see -- and seeing the secret, are the secret. For a second there is meaning! Then the hand lets the veil fall and you are alone, lost in the fog again, and you stumble on toward nowhere, for no good reason!”
― Eugene O'Neill, quote from Long Day's Journey Into Night
“Adam strokes my head, my face, he kisses my tears.
We are blessed.
Let them all go.
The sound of a bird flying low across the garden. Then nothing. Nothing. A cloud passes. Nothing again. Light falls through the window, falls onto me, into me.
Moments.
All gathering towards this one.”
― Jenny Downham, quote from Before I Die
“Wherever her feet pass, white flowers part the grass.”
― L.J. Smith, quote from Nightfall
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Love Comes SoftlyBookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.
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