Alice Hoffman (born March 16, 1952) is an American novelist and young-adult and children’s writer, best known for her 1995 novel Practical Magic, which was adapted for a 1998 film of the same name. Many of her works fall into the genre of magic realism and contain elements of magic, irony, and non-standard romances and relationships. These Alice Hoffman quotes will motivate you.
Best Alice Hoffman Quotes
- “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.” ~ Alice Hoffman
- “The weak are cruel. The strong have no need to be.” ~ Alice Hoffman
- “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.” ~ Alice Hoffman - “Once you know some things, you can’t unknow them. It’s a burden that can never be given away.” ~ Alice Hoffman
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“Books may well be the only true magic.” ~ Alice Hoffman
- “Every problem has a solution, although it may not be the outcome that was originally hoped for or expected.” ~ Alice Hoffman, Alice Hoffman quotes on problem
- “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.” ~ Alice Hoffman
- “This was what it meant to be human, to know that time moved and all things changed.” ~ Alice Hoffman
- “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.” ~ Alice Hoffman
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“Sometimes, running away means you’re headed in the exact right direction.” ~ Alice Hoffman
- “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.” ~ Alice Hoffman
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“Sometimes the right thing feels all wrong until it is over and done with.” ~ Alice Hoffman
- “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
- “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.” ~ Alice Hoffman
- “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” ~ Alice Hoffman
- “Some people say, ‘Save yourself and you save your ways.’ I say, ‘Be yourself and you save your soul.” ~ Alice Hoffman
- “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” ~ Alice Hoffman
- “When you start writing the magic comes when the characters seem to take on a life of their own and write the words for themselves.” ~ Alice Hoffman, Alice Hoffman quotes on life
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“When I walk, I walk with you. Where I go, you’re with me always.” ~ Alice Hoffman
- “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.” ~ Alice Hoffman
- “I feel as if when you love a book it becomes a part of you whether you have it on your shelves or not.” ~ Alice Hoffman
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“I’m at the point where going forward is easier than going back.” ~ Alice Hoffman
- “When all is said and done, the weather and love are the two elements about which one can never be sure.” ~ Alice Hoffman
- “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
- “There are some things, after all, that Sally Owens knows for certain: Always throw spilled salt over your left shoulder. Keep rosemary by your garden gate. Add pepper to your mashed potatoes. Plant roses and lavender, for luck. Fall in love whenever you can.” ~ Alice Hoffman
- “Some things, when they change, never do return to the way they once were. Butterflies for instance, and women who’ve been in love with the wrong man too often.” ~ Alice Hoffman
- “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.” ~ Alice Hoffman
- “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
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“Pride is a funny thing; it can make what is truly worthless appear to be a treasure.” ~ Alice Hoffman
- He has the ability to catch someone by the way that he looks at her, and make her wish he would go on looking.” ~ Alice Hoffman
- “Every time someone forgets, someone else disappears,’ my brother wrote.” ~ Alice Hoffman
- “I wasn’t good company, that was true, and people avoided me, but that was all right. I was too busy dreaming.” ~ Alice Hoffman
- “People want to ignore what they can’t understand. They’re looking for logic at any cost.” ~ Alice Hoffman
- “Real love, after all, was worth the price you paid, however briefly it might last.” ~ Alice Hoffman
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“Real love, after all, was worth the price you paid, however briefly it might last.” ~ Alice Hoffman
- “Young Sally Owens: He will hear my call a mile away. He will whistle my favorite song. He can ride a pony backward. Young Gillian Owens: What are you doing? Young Sally Owens: Summoning up a true love spell called Amas Veritas. He can flip pancakes in the air. He’ll be marvelously kind. And his favorite shape will be a star. And he’ll have one green eye and one blue. Young Gillian Owens: Thought you never wanted to fall in love. Young Sally Owens: That’s the point. The guy I dreamed of doesn’t exist. And if he doesn’t exist I’ll never die of a broken heart.” ~ Alice Hoffman
- “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” ~ Alice Hoffman
- “Always keep mint on your windowsill in August, to ensure that buzzing flies will stay outside, where they belong. Don’t think the summer is over, even when roses droop and turn brown and the stars shift position in the sky. Never presume August is a safe or reliable time of the year.” ~ Alice Hoffman
- “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” ~ Alice Hoffman
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“Outside, the September air was enticingly fragrant, yellow with pollen and rich, lemony sunlight.” ~ Alice Hoffman
- “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.” ~ Alice Hoffman
- “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.” ~ Alice Hoffman
- “Others said May was best, that sweet green time when lilacs bloomed and gardens along Main Street were filled with sugary pink peonies and Dutch tulips.” ~ Alice Hoffman
- “The grass he walked through was new and a sweet smell clung to his clothes. There was blue dye on his hands from the wild irises… that the color of the sky was a shade that could never be replicated in any photograph, just as Heaven could never be seen from the confines of Earth.” ~ 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” ~ Alice Hoffman