Quotes from Alice Hoffman

She can feel his blood, just beneath his skin; when he breathes, the air fills with smoke. He's like a dragon, ancient and fearless.

We stood and watched as God abandoned us, and then we did the best we could.

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.

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.

Whoever knows you when you are young can look inside you and see the person you once were, and maybe still are at certain times.

Those you love will not drown or burn. They will fly away.' ...'Now we both have people we love who are like birds. They have flown far from anything in this world that can hurt them. They're flying away still.

Anything whole can be broken," Isabelle told her. "And anything broken can be put back together again. That is the meaning of Abracadabra. I create what I speak.

I can hurt myself more than anyone else can, she told her sister. I can do it with my eyes closed.

I never even believed in happiness. I didn't think it existed. Now look at me. I'm ready to believe in just about anything.

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.

You watch teenage girls and feel shivers up and down your arms -- those poor creatures don't know the first thing about time or agony or the price they're going to have to pay for just about everything.

Are people drawn to each other because of the stories they carry inside? At the library I couldn't help but notice which patrons checked out the same books. They appeared to have nothing in common, but who could tell what a person was truly made of? The unknown, the riddle, the deepest truth. I noticed them all: the ones who'd lost their way, the ones who'd lived their lives in ashes, the ones who had to prove themselves, the ones who, like me, had lost the ability to feel.