Quotes from Alice Hoffman

Your grief won't go away; it's not a door you can close,or a book you can put back on the shelf,or a kiss you can give back once it's given. This is the way the world is now. Keep the worst things to yourself, like a bone in your throat.

What you wind up regretting aren't the things you do, it's what you don't do that you will never forgive yourself for.

She truly believed that she carried her own fate in the palm of her hand, as if destiny was nothing more than a green marble or a robin's egg, a trinket any silly girl could scoop up and keep. She believed that all you wanted, you would eventually receive, and that fate was a force which worked with you, not against you.

But can you measure someone's love? I want to know. You think you can measure love? She's kind not to laugh at me...No scale would be strong enough, she tells me. It would break to pieces under the weight.

At first it appeared as if something with wings had fallen from above... perhaps an angel who had faltered then drowned, in tears of this poor tired world.

It was easy to lie to people who still believed in the truth.

He realized how little he knew of this world, but he knew this: If you could love someone, you possessed a soul.

But I was not a mouse. In the fields where I walked, I was much more interested in the actions of the hawks.

But when it comes to most skills, failure is the only way to become better at something. Knitting teaches you that. You may have to unwind all of your stitches and start anew. That doesn't mean you've wasted your time. You learn from every stitch, even those that don't amount to anything. All writers should be made to knit a hat before they start writing a novel. It would help with understanding the importance of revision, and that the process is what can bring you the most

Butter melting on a dish meant someone nearby was in love, and a bird in the house take your bad luck out the window.

What is broken can also be mended.

She had the feeling that if she went home, she might never get away. She thought of birds caught in nets. There was something inside her, beating against her ribs, urging her to do things she might not otherwise attempt. She had the strongest desire to get lost.