Blue must be worn for protection. Moonstones were useful in connecting with the living, topaz to contact the dead. Copper, sacred to Venus, will call a man to you, and black tourmaline will eliminate jealousy. When it came to love, you must always be careful. If you dropped something belonging to the man you loved into a candle flame, then added pine needles and marigold flowers, he would arrive at your doorstep by morning, so you would do well to be certain you wanted him there. The most basic and reliable love potion was made from anise, rosemary, honey, and cloves boiled for nine hours on the back burner of the old stove. It had always cost $9.99 and was therefore called Love Potion Number Nine, which worked best on the ninth hour of the ninth day of the ninth month.

— Alice Hoffman

Books may well be the only true magic.

— Alice Hoffman

But in battle you cannot tell another when it is his time to enter the World-to-Come, nor is it possible to keep any man in this world when he wishes to leave it behind.

— Alice Hoffman

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

— Alice Hoffman

But now I understood that, although words were God's first creation, silence was closer to His divine spirit, and that prayers given in silence were infinitely greater than the thousands of words men might offer up to heaven.

— Alice Hoffman

But what we are given is taken as well, so that we know God's glory comes to us from His will alone.

— Alice Hoffman

Certain things need not be said, and there’s nothing, not a whisper, prayer, not a sacrifice, not a payment of any price, that would change what’s about to happen.

— Alice Hoffman

Children would beg for a peppermint drop each time he walked into town, and they'd follow behind, asking for a second and a third. When he died suddenly, while working late at his office, every boy and girl in the village reported smelling mint in the night air, as if something sweet had passed them right by.

— Alice Hoffman

Crying wasn't like riding a bike. Give it up, and you quickly forget how it's done.

— Alice Hoffman

Demons were said to be cruel, but a demon would never have been so brutal as this. A demon merely called you by name, threw his arms around you, whispered his plight, understood yours, then took you for his own.

— Alice Hoffman