For six months I did what women do: I waited. This is what women are taught to be good at. It's said that a woman's life is merely preparation for the primal nine-month wait. Whatever the reason, they do it well. Sometimes they drink or bite their fingernails down to the wrist. They count stars and initials and wait: for something to happen, for something to pass, to change, to begin, to end.

— Alice Hoffman

From the time I could read, I found solace in my father's library... At the ages of ten and eleven and twelve I would have preferred to remain in the library...

— Alice Hoffman

He carried so much suffering that it radiated out in waves. Sorrow is like that: whenever a person runs, it comes after him; it leaves an endless trail of pain.

— Alice Hoffman

He had appeared beside her because she had wanted him to. She had called him to her, and was calling him still. Even when she fell asleep, she dreamed of water, as if the world were topsy-turvy and everything she cared about had been lost in the deep. She plunged through the green waves with her eyes wide open, searching for the world as she'd known it, but that world no longer existed; everything that had once been solid was liquid now, and the birds swam alongside the fish.

— Alice Hoffman

...he had a way of taking your hand which made it clear he'd have to be the one to let go." From Alice Hoffman's "Local Girls", pg.102.

— Alice Hoffman

He knew even at an early age of seven, how dangerous it was for someone like him to have hope. He knows how to have no expectations. Furthermore, he can completely control not just what he wants, but what he needs

— Alice Hoffman

Helplessness and anger make for predictable behavior: Children are certain to shove each other and pull hair, teenagers will call each other names and cry, and grown women who are sisters will say words so cruel that each syllable will take on the form of a snake, although such a snake often circles in on itself to eat its own tail once the words are said aloud.

— Alice Hoffman

Here's the thing about luck...you don't know if it's good or bad until you have some perspective.

— Alice Hoffman

He started to look at me in a manner I recognized: it was the way I looked at a new book, one I had never read before, one that surprised me with all it had to say.

— Alice Hoffman

He stepped off the pavement like a man jumping off a bridge, as calm as a swimmer with an ocean out below. Lucy had known what he was going to do the instant their eyes met. She'd know what he intended because she would have done the very same thing if she'd had his courage. Nothing was going to break his fall.

— Alice Hoffman