Alice Hoffman

“I thought he knew me better than most...Then one nigh Jack brought me flowers, a handful of fading daisies he'd picked up at a farm stand, but flowers all the same. That was the end; that was how he ruined everything.”

“Heart, soul, treasure, rain, sister, memory, knowledge, hope, will.”

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

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“How had love come to this? This twisted dark place. The phone calls, the fear, the look on his face when he drove by the house.”

“He was so pale the freckles stood out on his face the way they did when he was upset or hadn't slept. She thought they might be telling her something if she could only understand the language of freckles.”

“Sometimes they'd be there for over an hour, the woman pointing out the catalpa trees, the sparrows, the streetlights,the porch, the little boy repeating the words. They laughed as though everything were a marvel in this rundown neighborhood. All common objects no normal person would bother to take note of, unless she thoughts she'd made a terrible mistake, someone who came back again, hoping that if she walked down the same street fate would whirl her backward in time until she was 17, when the future was not something she had stepped into, when it was just a idea, a moment, something that had not disappointed her yet.”

“She had been grief stricken as her father lay dying but now she felt weightless, the way people do when they're no longer sure they have a reason to be connected to this world. The slightest breeze could have carried her away, into the night sky, across the universe.”

“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.”

“Lydia went over and handed him a paper napkin. Conner stared at the napkin as if it were something delivered directly from the moon.”

“She judged people smartly and quickly, and often found herself in a huff.”

“He'd already realized that he could not begin to understand the things men did; now he saw women were even harder to figure out. Sometimes it almost seemed as if they were thinking one thing and talking about something else completely, and you didn't know what to believe: the thing they said or the thing they didn't.”

“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.”

“Everything seemed slow, molasses slow, lovesick slow.”

“But at long last she had some privacy and could go more than ten minutes without someone getting in her business, informing her that everything she did was wrong. As if she didn't already know that.”

“That was the way illness appeared in a house, in the corners, in between floorboards, on the hooks in the closet, along with the sweaters and coats.”

“She liked to disappear, even when she was in the same room as other people. It was a talent, as it was a curse.”

“Perhaps what people said was true, that any man who lived long enough would eventually realize that the way in which he was cursed was also the blessing he received.”

“How could I tell the doctor what was wrong with me? I didn't understand it myself. I couldn't articulate the pain; it was the pain of nothingness. My fear was of the weather, the atmosphere, the very air. What good did safety tips do me now? 'Avoid water, metal objects, rooftops; stay off the telephone in a storm, don't think glass can protect you; even if a storm was 8 miles away, you're still not safe from a strike. Avoid life perhaps that was the answer. The number one safety tip, stay away from it all.”

“Our house was littered with books- in the kitchen, under the beds, stuck between the couch pillows--far too many for her the ever finish. I suppose I thought if my grandmother kept up her interests, she wouldn't die; she'd have to stay around to finish the books she was so fond of. "I've got to get to the bottom of this one," she'd say, as if a book were no different from a pond or a lake. I thought she'd go on reading forever but it didn't work out that way.”

“If you believed in something strongly and give it enough credence, it could appear right in front of you. Though it had been created in your mind, it would claim a presence in the real world, a monster at your door, a demon pulling at your coat sleeve.”

“The only people out at this hour were ones who couldn't sleep, those haunted by one thing or another: love thwarted, love lost, love thrown away. They were the sort of people who didn't want to be noticed, who wanted to slip through shadows, be alone with their despair.”

“Demons were said to be cruel, but a demon would never have been so brutal as this. A demon merely called you by name, threw his arms around you, whispered his plight, understood yours, then took you for his own.”

“What was a demon but a lost soul, one that had been forced to use his skills to survive.”

“What people called the truth seemed worthless to her; what was it but a furtive, bruised story to convince yourself life was worth living.”

“Your grand daughter may not be looking for trouble, but trouble is looking for her.”

“...the eldest who had the misfortune of being too beautiful and had a far off look in her eyes. Madame Cohen had seen what could happen to girls like that, they were picked off like fruit on a tree, devoured by blackbirds.”

“...even though she felt a wave of dread. If they knew she was nervous, she'd be at their mercy. But if they thought she was ice they'd be afraid to touch her.”

“...the summer of the gypsy moths when all the trees in their yard were bare, the leaves chewed by caterpillars. You could hear crunching in the night. You could see silvery cocoon webbing in porch rafter and strung across stop signs.”

“As for me, sleep was a country I no longer visited, despite my incantation. When I did, I wished for my waking life, the hours when I didn't see the nightmare images of all that had happened and all I had become.”

“Perhaps it is possible to discover more in silence than in speech. Or perhaps it is only that those who are silent among us learn to listen.”

“Dreams came to men for many reasons, both as oracles and as warnings.”

“You are only worthy of what you prove yourself to be.”

“If we had paid attention, we would have understood there are some things in this world you cannot outrun.”

“I knelt by the fire to make certain there were no burning embers left. That was when I spied the tracks of a lion. There were only a few such beasts left in the desert, but one had come here, answering my call. He had been there all the while, watching over me, before he left me at last.”

“Real love, after all, was worth the price you paid, however briefly it might last.”

“You are my armor and my sword, my faith and my treasure, everything I'm fighting for.”

“Do what you want, do what you will, do what you have to, do what you think you cannot.”

“History is personal, Gwen understands that now. All you are seeing is what's before you, the rest is guesswork.”

“She truly believed that she carried her own fate in the palm of her hand, as if destiny was nothing more than a green marble or a robin's egg, a trinket any silly girl could scoop up and keep. She believed that all you wanted, you would eventually receive, and that fate was a force which worked with you, not against you.”

“I understood that fate could not be eluded forever; it came on leathery wings, swooping through the darkness like the bats in the orchards.”

“No barrier was strong enough to keep out the movement of time.”

“The river runs every shade of blue that has ever been known to humankind: ink and turquoise and lapis, indigo, teal, cerulean, and ultramarine.”

“... hoping that if she just walked down the same street fate would whirl her backward in time until she was once more (fill in your age), when the future was something she had not yet stepped into, when it was just an idea, a moment, something that had not disappointed her yet.”

“I dream of a love that even time will lie down and be still for.”

“My grandmother told me once that when you lose somebody you think you've lost the whole world as well, but that's not the way things turn out in the end. Eventually, you pick yourself up and look out the window, and once you do you see everything that was there before the world ended is out there still. There are the same apple trees and the same songbirds, and over our heads, the very same sky that shines like heaven, so far above us we can never hope to reach such heights.”

“You ever put your arms out and spin really, really fast ?Well, that's what loves like. It makes your heart race. It turns the world upside down. But if you're not careful, if you don't keep your eyes on something still, you can lose your balance. You can't see what's happening to the people around you. You can't see your about to fall.”

“Love ambushed you, it lay in wait, dormant for days or years. It was the red thread, the peach stone, the kiss, the forgiveness. It came after you, it escaped you, it was invisible, it was everything.”