752 Quotes by 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.

She read the color-coded series of Andrew Lang’s fairy tales to her mother. They became lost in an enchanted cottage with vines growing over the window. It was dark and it was quiet and they could hear each other softly breathing. Every story had the same message: what was deep inside could only be deciphered by someone who understood how easily a heart could be broken.

Somehow, what they’d had was already over, and she hadn’t even been aware of the end. This happened with roses: it was possible to take them for granted all summer as they wound along fences and gates, and then in September, when they faded, how beautiful they’d once been suddenly took hold. That was when people began to yearn for them, and all winter long they’d watch the bare branches for buds, vowing that this time they’d be grateful for all that they had.

When you have lost your mother you have lost the world.

They believed that remembering someone could bring them back to you long after they had departed, if you only concentrated hard enough, if you stood outside on a windy night and tried to count every star sprinkled across the universe like rice on a table or stones in a lake, like bones in a body or snowdrops in the grass.

Love was never a mistake, even when it wasn’t returned.

Life is trouble, brother. You’ve got to fight for what you want.

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

Sometimes words spoken are the ones you’ve been afraid to think, but once they’re said aloud there’s no way to make them disappear.