"Books may well be the only true magic."
— Alice Hoffman

"Sometimes the right thing feels all wrong until it is over and done with."
— Alice Hoffman (Practical Magic)

"It doesn't matter what people tell you. It doesn't matter what they might say. Sometimes you have to leave home. Sometimes, running away means you're headed in the exact right direction."
— Alice Hoffman (Practical Magic)

"If every life is a river, then it's little wonder that we do not even notice the changes that occur until we are far out in the darkest sea. One day you look around and nothing is familiar, not even your own face.
My name once meant daughter, grandaughter, friend, sister, beloved. Now those words mean only what their letters spell out; Star in the night sky. Truth in the darkness.
I have crossed over to a place where I never thought I'd be. I am someone I would have never imagined. A secret. A dream. I am this, body and soul. Burn me. Drown me. Tell me lies. I will still be who I am."
— Alice Hoffman (Incantation)

"People hide their truest nature. I understood that; I even applauded it. What sort of world would it be if people bled all over the sidewalks, if they wept under trees, smacked whomever they despised, kissed strangers, revealed themselves?"
— Alice Hoffman (The Ice Queen)

"There are some things, after all, that Sally Owens knows for sure certain: Always throw spilled salt over your left shoulder. Keep rosemary by your garden gate. Add pepper to your mashed potatoes. Plant roses and lavender, for luck. Fall in love whenever you can."
— Alice Hoffman (Practical Magic)

"The moon is always jealous of the heat of the day, just as the sun always longs for something dark and deep."
— Alice Hoffman

"Be careful what you wish for. I know that for a fact. Wishes are brutal, unforgiving things. They burn your tongue the moment they're spoken and you can never take them back."
— Alice Hoffman

"You build your world around someone, and then what happens when he disappears? Where do you go- into pieces, into atoms, into the arms of another man? You go shopping, you cook dinner, you work odd hours, you make love to someone else on June nights. But you're not really there, you're someplace else where there is blue sky and a road you don't recognize. If you squint your eyes, you think you see him, in the shadows, beyond the trees. You always imagine that you see him, but he's never there. It's only his spirit, that's what's there beneath the bed when you kiss your husband, there when you send your daughter off to school. It's in your coffee cup, your bathwater, your tears. Unfinished business always comes back to haunt you, and a man who swears he'll love you forever isn't finished with you until he's done."
— Alice Hoffman (Here on Earth)

"Here's the thing about luck...you don't know if it's good or bad until you have some perspective."
— Alice Hoffman (Local Girls)

"Every fairy tale had a bloody lining. Every one had teeth and claws."
— 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 (Local Girls)

"That is the joy of reading fiction: when all is said and done, the novel belongs to the reader and his or her imagination."
— Alice Hoffman

"The weak are cruel. The strong have no need to be."
— Alice Hoffman (The Foretelling)

"Sometimes they would sit in the parlor together, both reading – in entirely separate worlds, to be sure, but joined somehow. When this happened, other people in the family couldn't bring themselves to disturb them. All that could be heard in the parlor was the sound of pages, turning."
— Alice Hoffman

"Outside, the September air was enticingly fragrant, yellow with pollen and rich, lemony sunlight."
— Alice Hoffman (The River King)

"Just because something is unspoken doesn't mean that it disappears."
— Alice Hoffman (Incantation)

"Jill told me that when you're really in love, you know right away. I'm not exactly sure how this happens. Is it like a flash of lightning? Like an angel tapping you on the shoulder? Or is it similar to choosing a puppy? You think you're picking the cutest one, but really you wind up going home with the one who keeps insisting on climbing into your lap."
— Alice Hoffman (Local Girls)

"Feel lucky for what you have when you have it. Isn't that the point? Happily ever after doesn't mean happy forever. The ever after, what precisely was that? Your dreams, your life, your death, your everything. Was it the blank space that went on without us? The forever after we were gone? "
— Alice Hoffman (The Ice Queen)

"I wrote to find beauty and purpose, to know that love is possible and lasting and real, to see day lilies and swimming pools, loyalty and devotion, even though my eyes were closed, and all that surrounded me was a darkened room. I wrote because that was who I was at the core, and if I was too damaged to walk around the block, I was lucky all the same. Once I got to my desk, once I started writing, I still believed anything was possible."
— 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

"Some people say, 'Save yourself and you save your ways.' I say, 'Be yourself and you save your soul.'"
— Alice Hoffman (Incantation)

"Some things you cannot wish away or think away. They become part of you when you remember them."
— Alice Hoffman (Incantation)

"Sometimes words drew blood, they cut your tongue, they made you know things you couldn't unknow. "
— Alice Hoffman (The Story Sisters)

"" . . . Always throw spilled salt over your left shoulder. Keep rosemary by your garden gate. Add pepper to your mashed potatoes. Plant roses and lavender, for luck. Fall in love whenever you can.""
— Alice Hoffman

"When I walk, I walk with you. Where I go, you're with me always."
— Alice Hoffman

"I was beginning to understand.My grandmother's love was cold because she was afraid of things;that was why everything had to be perfect."
— Alice Hoffman (Incantation)

"It was as if hope had appeared out of nowhere to settle beside her and it wasn't going anywhere, it wasn't going to desert her now."
— Alice Hoffman

" 'Once you know some things, you can't unknow them. It's a burden that can never be given away.' "
— Alice Hoffman (Incantation)

"You can be betrayed in your sleep. The whole world can tilt while you're dreaming of butterflies. "
— Alice Hoffman (The Ice Queen)

""If I hadn't learned my lesson, I would have wished we could stay there forever. But I knew better now. We'd seen what we'd come to see. The way to trick death. Breathe in. Breathe out. Watch as it all rises upwards, black and blue into the even bluer sky.""
— Alice Hoffman (The Ice Queen)

" '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.' "
— Alice Hoffman (Incantation)

"Remember what I've told you. Remember me. "
— Alice Hoffman

" 'I know who you are in your heart,' Andres said. 'That's all that matters.' And that was it. That was the moment. Now I knew how I would feel if I ever lost him. That was how you knew love. My mother had told me that. All you had to do was imagine your life without the other person, and if the thought alone made you shiver, then you knew."
— Alice Hoffman (Incantation)

" 'In losing a friend, she is reminded of all she has lost and all she stands to lose again. There is nothing to be done to make it any easier.
We all grieve alone.' "
— Alice Hoffman (Incantation)

"You cannot dispute the ridiculous. You cannot argue reasonably with evil."
— Alice Hoffman (Incantation)

"We had to survive to remember. Otherwise everything we were would disappear. Those people we loved would fade as though we'd never loved them, as if they'd never walked and talked and burned, forgetting them was the real evil. That was the hole of darkness."
— Alice Hoffman (Incantation)

"Trouble is just like love, after all; it comes in unannounced and takes over before you've had a chance to reconsider, or even to think."
— Alice Hoffman (Practical Magic)

"He was in love, and people in that condition did stupid, unfathomable things. They were all flawed, every single one."
— Alice Hoffman

"Some stories stayed with you even when you wanted to forget them."
— Alice Hoffman

"In no time the perennial borders were thick with rosy-pink foxglove and cream-colored lilies, each of which hung like a pendant, collecting dew on its satiny petals."
— Alice Hoffman (The River King)

"Others said May was best, that sweet green time when lilacs bloomed and gardens along Main Street were filled with sugary pink peonies and Dutch tulips."
— Alice Hoffman (The River King)

"My grief was cold. It was nothing to share. It was nothing to speak about, nothing to feel."
— Alice Hoffman (Green Angel)

"Still, I couldn't help but wonder if it was a mistake for people like us to be tied to a place. If we weren't meant to be ready and willing to wander. If everything we needed was contained in who we were.
And what we remember."
— Alice Hoffman (Incantation)

" 'Maybe a hundred years ago our people should have run away from this place, I said...
'And then run from the next place and the next place and the place after that? You run once, what makes you think you won't have to run all the rest of your life?... We love moment to moment... Everything changes. One minute we are part of the river, and the next we are joined with the sea.'"
— Alice Hoffman (Incantation)

"Only her death could prove her innocence; a circle of impossible, deathly judgement. "
— Alice Hoffman (Incantation)

"And then I understood that she had no idea what she'd done to my family. She thought love and hatred were equal."
— Alice Hoffman (Incantation)

" 'I thought you were supposed to be the champion of your people,' I said.
'I live because I need to do that. For anyone who is left.'
'Don't you see? No one will be left. Protect them now or there will be no one to protect!'
'This is a battle that goes on and on. It never ends. You're too young to understand.
'No! You're too much of a coward to fight.'
I was sick of lies and secrets and of battles so old we had to erase who we were to fight back. And still we lost. Still we were tied to posts. "
— Alice Hoffman (Incantation)

"There are some things, after all, that Sally Owens knows for certain: Always throw spilled salt over your left shoulder. Keep rosemary by your garden gate. Add pepper to your mashed potatoes. Plant roses and lavender for luck. Fall in love whenever you can."
— Alice Hoffman (Practical Magic)

"When all is said and done, the weather and love are the two elements about which one can never be sure.
"
— Alice Hoffman