Blackbird House Quotes

“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, Blackbird House

“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, Blackbird House

“Everyone knows a white blackbird is nothing more than a ghost, a shadow of what it ought to be.”
― Alice Hoffman, Blackbird House

“WITCHES TAKE THEIR NAMES FROM PLACES, for places are what give them their strength. The place need not be beautiful, or habitable, or even green. Sand and salt, so much the better. Scrub pine, plumberry, and brambles, better still. From every bitter thing, after all, something hardy will surely grow. From every difficulty, the seed that’s sewn is that much stronger. Ruin is the milk all witches must drink; it’s the lesson they learn and the diet they’re fed upon.”
― Alice Hoffman, Blackbird House

“I read Greek myths. I read about far off places, Venice and Paris. I read about men who searched for things they could not find at home, and women who fell in love with the wrong person and waited for the arrival of their beloved for so long that a year was no different from a single day. The same thing was happening to me. Years were passing. I was already a woman, and I still wasn't done reading.”
― Alice Hoffman, Blackbird House

“Everything seemed slow, molasses slow, lovesick slow.”
― Alice Hoffman, Blackbird House

“He thought about how love could move you in ways you wouldn’t have imagined, one foot in front of the other, even when you thought you had nothing left inside.”
― Alice Hoffman, Blackbird House

“Somewhere there was a book of love, with all the symptoms written down in red ink: Dizziness and Desire. A tendency to stare at the night sky, searching for a message that might be found up above. A lurching in the pit of the stomach, as if something much too sweet had been eaten. The ability to hear the quietest sounds--snails munching the lettuce leaves, moths drinking nectar from the overripe pears on the tree by the fence, a rabbit trembling in ivy-just in case he might be there, which was what mattered all along. Real hunger, just to see him, as if this would ever be enough.”
― Alice Hoffman, Blackbird House

“I read books as though I were eating apples, core and all, starved for those pages, hungry for every word that told me about things I didn’t yet have, but still wanted terribly, wanted until it hurt.”
― Alice Hoffman, Blackbird House

“Well, maybe that was fate. Maybe she was meant to be alone. She was a runner, and wasn't that the habit of a person who preferred to be on her own?”
― Alice Hoffman, Blackbird House

“Even with her failing vision, Violet West could see the scars. They had turned purple, almost red, from the icy cold, the color of the pears on the tree in the yard, the color of blood that can't be washed away and of things that can never be undone.”
― Alice Hoffman, Blackbird House

“WITCHES TAKE THEIR NAMES FROM PLACES, for places are what give them their strength. The place need not be beautiful, or habitable, or even green. Sand and salt, so much the better. Scrub pine, plumberry, and brambles, better still. From every bitter thing, after all, something hardy will surely grow. From every difficulty, the seed that’s sewn is that much stronger.”
― Alice Hoffman, Blackbird House

“It was the farm they'd bought down at the edge of the Cape ... The very edge of the world, ... It was the light that Emma remembered as so very different from city light, thin and yellow, with flecks of gold as the afternoon stretched on. Apricot light, her mother used to call it. Peach light. Summertime light that made a person forget gray skies and city life. The air was sweeter there, the cardinals were a deeper scarlet than their city cousins, and when the crickets called, it was possible to feel the vibration of their song. Each time they opened the car doors and crossed the grass, it was as though they had stepped off the globe, as though the world had stopped turning, as though they might, for a little while at least, be safe.”
― Alice Hoffman, Blackbird House

“I let the story out slowly; I knew from all the reading I’d done that was the best way to tell a tale, start far away from the center, but know where that center is at all times.”
― Alice Hoffman, Blackbird House

“Snow made him feel like crying sometimes-just the first flakes, the purest stuff.”
― Alice Hoffman, Blackbird House

“The imperfect were often angry”
― Alice Hoffman, Blackbird House

“Everything she loved had already happened and had already been.”
― Alice Hoffman, Blackbird House

“Sometimes they would sit in the parlor together, both reading – in entirely separate worlds, to be sure, but joined somehow.”
― Alice Hoffman, Blackbird House

“She liked soot, and heat, and grime, and she was beginning to realize, if she didn't actually like her aloneness, she was at least comforted by it. She should be grateful; she knew, she knew. She should be thrilled just to be alive. So why was it she preferred to expect nothing?”
― Alice Hoffman, Blackbird House

“Lion had to kiss her then and there, even though when he kissed her he felt as though he were swallowing her sadness.”
― Alice Hoffman, Blackbird House