Local Girls Quotes

“...he had a way of taking your hand which made it clear he'd have to be the one to let go.”
― Alice Hoffman, Local Girls

“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

“Still, she knows one thing for certain: never judge a relationship unless you are the one wrapped up in its arms.”
― Alice Hoffman, Local Girls

“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

“It was the sort of beauty you feel so deeply it becomes contagious and somehow makes you feel beautiful too.”
― Alice Hoffman, Local Girls

“In the darkest hour of winter, when the starlings had all flown away, Gretel Samuelson fell in love. It happened the way things are never supposed to happen in real life, like a sledgehammer, like a bolt from out of the blue. One minute she was a seventeen year-old senior in high school waiting for a Sicilian pizza to go; the next one she was someone whose whole world had exploded, leaving her adrift in the Milky Way, so far from earth she was walking on stars.”
― Alice Hoffman, Local Girls

“Good fortune can take forever to get to you, but as it turns out, sorrow is as quick as a shot.”
― Alice Hoffman, Local Girls

“Jill and I have known each other our whole lives. One house separates our houses but we act as if it doesn't exist. We met before we were born and we'll probably still know each other after we die. At least, that's the way we're planning it.”
― Alice Hoffman, Local Girls

“Before she realized he was next to her, he had placed his hands over hers on the countertop, then hooped his fingers through hers. Gretel looked up at him, so startled she might as well have been shot.
'I just wanted to wake you up', he said.
Which is exactly what he did. One look at him and her heart was racing. One look, and whatever had been before was all over.”
― Alice Hoffman, Local Girls

“He'd thought he was lost, but now he recognized that eternity was around him, like salt from a shaker or stars in the sky.”
― Alice Hoffman, Local Girls

“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, Local Girls

“I could hardly get a boy to look at me. All right, they'd look, they'd even take me out, but no one asked for a second date. I was too nasty, a real wise guy, and all the boys could tell what my rotten disposition was. Deep down, I wanted a commitment with a capital C. To get anywhere with me, a boy would have to sign his undying loyalty with his own blood.”
― Alice Hoffman, Local Girls

“She wishes nightmares were all that kept her awake. She cannot tell which disturbs here more, the future or the past.”
― Alice Hoffman, Local Girls

“Revenge did that to a person; it caused even the insecure and the meek to take foolhardy chances. After a while it became a way of life; the risks felt as natural as drawing a breath.”
― Alice Hoffman, Local Girls

“Fate could twist you around and around if you weren't careful. Just when you thought you knew where you were headed, you'd wind up in the opposite direction, or flattened against a wall.”
― Alice Hoffman, Local Girls

“Time wasn't the same anymore. Doors were slamming shut before we even knew they'd been opened. Good fortune can take forever to get to you, but as it turns out, sorrow is as quick as a shot.”
― Alice Hoffman, Local Girls

“Well, maybe that's what love is, as state of mind ready to grace anyone willing to accept it. Anyone who cares.”
― Alice Hoffman, Local Girls

“You can only know a friend so well after all. When you come right down to it, even your best friend is a puzzle.”
― Alice Hoffman, Local Girls

“One thing I've learned is that strange things do happen. They happen all the time. Today, for instance, my best friend Jill's cat spoke. We were making brownies in the kitchen when we heard it say, 'Let me out.”
― Alice Hoffman, Local Girls

“But maybe a broken heart seemed a simple price to pay, the way that all costs that must be settled in the future appear, until they suddenly come due.”
― Alice Hoffman, Local Girls

“In the last few months, she'd had a lot of time to consider the state of mankind, and she'd decided that people actually had very few choices in their lives. Most things happened to you. Most things rolled right over you and then kept on going.”
― Alice Hoffman, Local Girls

“One morning when the air was misleading and mild with hope....”
― Alice Hoffman, Local Girls

“She thought I was impossible, but she loved me anyway, which is the best sort of love there is.”
― Alice Hoffman, Local Girls

“When they got back in the Corvette, Gretel fished around in her shopping bad. "What is this?"
She had chosen a black tank suit, but somehow a pink bikini had wound up among her purchases.
"Don't be mad," Margot pleaded.
"I'm not wearing this." Gretel tossed the bikini back in the bag. All the same, she couldn't help but notice the fabric was the same exact shade as the palest climbing roses. The tint of seashells on a deserted beach, or the mouth of someone you might want to kiss.”
― Alice Hoffman, Local Girls

“Cleaning up after themselves was a low priority for Margo and my mother. They had both recovered from cancer scares, failed marriages, and lost hope; in their opinion, dirt could wait.”
― Alice Hoffman, Local Girls

“They'll never meet him. They'll never know that its actually possible for a boy to be so boring you'd agree to kiss him just to get him to shut up. I should get paid to listen to him talk when he calls on the phone. I should get a dollar fifty a hour. Minimum.”
― Alice Hoffman, Local Girls

“You had to wonder who all these people in their cars were leaving behind and who they were driving toward, and if they knew that in the distance, the echo of their tires on the asphalt sounded like a river, and that to someone like me, it could seem like the miracle I'd been looking for.”
― Alice Hoffman, Local Girls

“...and taking their time, walking slowly, like tourists, even though this is a landscape they know inside out. The streetlamps cast a hazy glow, the light of a dream you're not quite finished waking from. Fireflies drift across the lawns.”
― Alice Hoffman, Local Girls

“What was life anyway? Only a continuous vale of sadness and tears.”
― Alice Hoffman, Local Girls

“Somehow, I knew how alone he felt, and it gave me shivers to think that alienation could be a shared experience.”
― Alice Hoffman, Local Girls