Top 269 Quotes & Sayings by Alice Hoffman

I never see a novel as a film while I'm writing it. Mostly because novels and films are so different, and I'm such an internal novelist.

I also like the whole idea of fairy tales and folk tales being a woman's domain, considered a lesser domain at the time they were told.

Hawthorne has given us a tradition that some people refer to as Yankee Magic Realism, and I do think there is a certain quality to the landscape that definitely leads into the dark woods.

Any institution becomes a community - whether it's a high school or a boarding school or a publishing company or a small town where everybody knows certain things about people.

I always quit at three when my kids come home from school so I feel pretty spoiled.

I've been a screenwriter for twenty-five years. Every one of my books have been optioned for movies and I have written a few of those screenplays.

You can try to take sorrow and make it into something enduring, meaningful and beautiful. I always feel guilty that this is my job, that I get to do this.

I never plot out my novels in terms of the tone of the book. Hopefully, once a story is begun it reveals itself.

I don't really read as much as I used to. A lot of what I was looking for as an escape I find in writing. And the other thing is that I don't want to get into someone else's language when I'm working.

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.

I really feel like the gift is also the curse. It's always half-and-half. Whatever brings you the most joy will also probably bring you the most pain. Always a price to pay.

I did go there later, but I hadn't been there before I wrote the book. Sometimes I feel like the imagined can feel more real than the real?

After a while, the characters I'm writing begin to feel real to me. That's when I know I'm heading in the right direction.

I don't think I make much of a distinction between the 'real' and the 'fantastic.' They both seem to be threads in the same cloth as far as I'm concerned.

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

I think growing up is difficult and it's a process that I'm always interested in, with kids and adults, they are often on two different universes.

Ironically, now that my children are older and gone quite a bit, I find it harder to work when they're not around. Too much free time!

I think we are bound to, and by, nature. We may want to deny this connection and try to believe we control the external world, but every time there's a snowstorm or drought, we know our fate is tied to the world around us.

The original fairy tale was about the youngest sister going into a room in the castle and finding all the bodies of the wives that came before her - she is confronted with truth, thinking about how often we think we know people and we really don't.

Mothers always find ways to fit in the work - but then when you're working, you feel that you should be spending time with your children and then when you're with your children, you're thinking about working.

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?

No one knows how to write a novel until it's been written.

They were written on cheap blue notebooks bought by poor women. I'm interested in folk tales in the way that medicine and magic in women's stories are all kind of combined.

The adults don't know what's happening on the kids' universe and the kids don't know what's happening on the adults' universe.

I always felt and still feel that fairy tales have an emotional truth that is so deep that there are few things that really rival them.

I'm much faster now. When you only have a certain amount of time to write, after a while you learn to use your time well or you stop writing.

Every time I finish a book, I forget everything I learned writing it - the information just disappears out of my head.

Sometimes movies really are the best medicine.

Even in times when it's difficult to figure out, how do you go forward, art - and books - always help.

Anyway, the sort of love that will not wait is probably best to pass by.

It was a great escape for me and it was a way to take a break from what was going on in my own world, to go into another world.

I think secrets often come out. I spoke to a friend who is a therapist and I asked her if there were people who came to her and admitted to doing horrible things and she said, 'More than you know.'

All the characters in my books are imagined, but all have a bit of who I am in them - much like the characters in your dreams are all formed by who you are.

I can't really work on more than one thing at a time.

I have crossed over to a place where I never thought I’d be. I am someone I would have never imagined. A secret. A dream. I am this, body and soul. Burn me. Drown me. Tell me lies. I will still be who I am.

Just because something is unspoken doesn't mean that it disappears.

My grandmother told me once that when you lose somebody you think you've lost the whole world as well, but that's not the way things turn out in the end. Eventually, you pick yourself up and look out the window, and once you do you see everything that was there before the world ended is out there still. There are the same apple trees and the same songbirds, and over our heads, the very same sky that shines like heaven, so far above us we can never hope to reach such heights.

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.

It's not finding what's lost, it's understanding what you've found.

If we had paid attention, we would have understood there are some things in this world you cannot outrun.

You can't dispute the ridiculous. You can't argue reasonably with evil.

Sometimes, running away means you're headed in the exact right direction.

Books may well be the only true magic.

You have to choose the voice you are going to trust. You can't listen to everyone.

Pride is a funny thing; it can make what is truly worthless appear to be a treasure.

The weak are cruel. The strong have no need to be.

My theory is that everyone at one time or another has been at the fringe of society in some way: an outcast in high school, a stranger in a foreign country, the best at something, the worst at something, the one who's different. Being an outsider is the one thing we all have in common.

This was what it meant to be human, to know that time moved and all things changed.

No one knows you like a person with whom you've shared a childhood. No one will ever understand you in quite the same way.

I'm at the point where going forward is easier than going back.

All the characters in my books are imagined, but all have a bit of who I am in them - much like the characters in your dreams are all formed by who you are

Be careful what you wish for. I know that for a fact. Wishes are brutal, unforgiving things. They burn your tongue the moment they're spoken and you can never take them back.

Once you know some things, you can't unknow them. It's a burden that can never be given away.

Some things, however, are true no matter how hard you might try to block them out, and a lie is always a lie, no matter how prettily told. Some doors, once they're opened, can never be closed again, just as some trust, once it's been lost, can never be won back.

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

Sometimes the right thing feels all wrong until it is over and done with.

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.

Do what you want, do what you will, do what you have to, do what you think you cannot.

Some people say, 'Save yourself and you save your ways.' I say, 'Be yourself and you save your soul.

My darling girl, when are you going to realize that being normal is not necessarily a virtue? It rather denotes a lack of courage." - Aunt Frances