The Rules of Magic

by Alice Hoffman

Are you rabbits or brave souls?” their aunt called. “A rabbit darts away, thinking it will be safe, and then is picked up by a hawk. A brave soul comes to have dinner with me.”

“I’m fated to lose everyone I ever love,” April said. “I already know that.” “Of course you are,” Jet responded in her calm, measured tone. “That’s what it means to be alive.”

“Is there more to the story?” Vincent asked. “There’s more to every story,” his aunt told him.

“I remember everything about you. I was waiting all that time for you to love me.”

“I don’t care what you are, as long as you’re mine,”

“The world will do enough to us, we don’t have to do it to ourselves,”

for this occurred only once in a person’s life, and then only if he was lucky. It happened the way things happen in a dream. A door opens, a person calls your name, your heart beats faster, and everything is familiar, yet you don’t know where you are. You are falling, you’re in a house you don’t recognize and yet you want to be here, you have actually wanted to be here all of your life.

Franny walked home, four miles as the crow flies. When she reached 44 Greenwich Avenue she went inside alone, and only the crow knew that it was possible for a woman to claim to have no heart at all and still cry as though her heart would break.

when you truly love someone and they love you in return, you ruin your lives together. That is not a curse, it’s what life is, my girl. We all come to ruin, we turn to dust, but whom we love is the thing that lasts.”

“One life may be over, but another can begin.”