We can offer women what they want most of all, cures for the most common ailments of this world... When children are ailing or babies refuse to be born, when men are unfaithful, when the sky is empty of rain, when the amulets buried beneath holy wall upon instructions of the minim offer not solace and all entreaties to the priests for guidance fail, when the rituals they offer bring no comfort and no consolation, they come to us.

— Alice Hoffman

What was a demon but a lost soul, one that had been forced to use his skills to survive.

— Alice Hoffman

What was a rose but the living proof of desire, the single best evidence of human longing and earthly devotion. But desire could be twisted, after all, and Jealousy was the name of the rose that did well in arid souls.

— Alice Hoffman

What was desire anyway, when examined in the clear light of day? Was it the way a woman searched for her clothes in the morning, or the manner in which a man might watch her sit before the mirror and comb her hair? Was it a pale November dawn, when ice formed on windowpanes and crows called from the bare black trees? Or was it the way a person might yield to the night, setting forth on a path so unexpected that daylight would never again be completely clear?

— 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 I walk, I walk with you. Where I go, you're with me always.

— Alice Hoffman

When Juliet came flying down the hallway, Stella didn't recognize her friend. Juliet hadn't bothered with makeup; she was wearing a nightgown underneath her raincoat and had on plastic flip-flops. This was the way loved walked in, barely dressed, confused, panic-stricken, overcome, not caring what anyone thought or what they believed.

— 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

...who I am to talk? I dream of rain.

— Alice Hoffman

You can get addicted to trouble if you're not careful.

— Alice Hoffman