Alice Hoffman

“He opened his eyes for an instant. Other people were writing and melting, but my brother stopped his flight long enough to look at me. An instant that would have to last forever. And then the flames rose higher and my brother was gone. ”

“I knew that my brother would still be a part of this world no matter what happened next. I felt my love for him so deeply that my blood seemed to flow down the street to him. My blood sang out my prayer for Luis even while he was still living in our world.”

“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.”

“And then I understood that she had no idea what she'd done to my family. She thought love and hatred were equal.”

“There comes a time when every one of our people understands that a Jew can never be attached to a place. The rules always change, and we always lose. People will always despise us, and we must be ready to fly away. We cannot have roots in the earth of any country, only in the garden that we carry inside us.”

“I thought of the bowl of water my mother taught me to look into. It was true, everything a person ever needed to know was right there in a single bowl small enough to fit in the palm of one hand.”

“People all over town had listened for my grandfather's cries, but there were none. Only silence.”

“My grandmother was overwhelmed by what was happening to us. She ahd moved back into the past because the here and the now was too terrible. ”

“Abra DeMadrigal didn't look young enough to be my sister anymore. Her sorrow weighed her down and aged her. She was still beautiful, but she looked very far away. No wonder our people had raven eyes, so distant, so sad. No matter how wise she was, my mother looked like a woman who hadn't truely believed how much evil there was in our world. Not until this moment. ”

“You cannot dispute the ridiculous. You cannot argue reasonably with evil.”

“Like the rabbi with the red circle, she should have said "no" to everything. She should have become a raven. She didn't understand that every word the judge said was a trap, in that every word she said could easily be a stone used to shut her into that trap.”

“When I looked at her, she appeared to be a different person from the one I'd known... She had rewritten everything, our history together, our friendship. Now I was the girl who'd stolen Andres; the girl who'd lied to her about who I was. Therefore, she owned me nothing.”

“...but now the worst crime was pretending to be something you were not.”

“He spoke with a raven's voice, old and wise and far above the cruelty of the human race.”

“I saw the end of his life right there in that single moment. His pride, his decency, his secrets, his death.”

“People in the courtroom let loose with their disgust, cursing us, d--ning us, we who had become less than human. Marranos. Pigs.As for me, I felt something rise in my throat: the horror of the world of men.”

“Only her death could prove her innocence; a circle of impossible, deathly judgement. ”

“Every time someone forgets, someone else disappears,' my brother wrote.”

“That's why there are ten gates to pass through before you reach the garden. If life were easy there would be one gate. There would be no gates at all.”

“I would not begin to understand until I was a very old woman, and even then they would still be a mystery.”

“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.”

“What did you see?' he asked then.Nothing,' I told him. 'Because nothing is what you wanted me to see, though the man on the table might disagree.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“This kind of knowing you can never tell to anyone. If you want us to survive, you cannot trust a soul'... 'Not for any reason on this earth. You can never tell,”

“Once you know some things, you can't unknow them. It's a burden that can never be given away.”

“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.”

“Some things you cannot wish away or think away. They become part of you when you remember them.”

“Just because something is unspoken doesn't mean that it disappears.”

“Let everyone see the blood,' he said. 'Don't clean it up. That's the only way people remember.'... I could see the blood inside my head. It was with me forever, whether or not I wanted to forget.”

“I wasn't quite as certain that I knew her soul. When it came right down to it, I wasn't sure she knew me either.”

“But most important of all, she explained that it was all right to say 'No. I disagree.' That was a gift. I understood it was power. The power to think my own thoughts. The power to believe in myself.”

“She was partial to emeralds; she said they were the single thing that remained constant, always green, always the same...My mother had been right, it was one thing that lasted, the one thing we could depend on. Other than our love for each other, it was all we had right now.”

“Never look at other people's bad fortune,' my mother said. 'If you do, it will come back to find you instead of its rightful owner.”

“My mother, Abra, had taught me that all people are made from the same dust. When our days here are gone, all men and women enter the same garden. ”

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

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

“When the cold comes to New England it arrives in sheets of sleet and ice. In December, the wind wraps itself around bare trees and twists in between husbands and wives asleep in their beds. It shakes the shingles from the roofs and sifts through cracks in the plaster. The only green things left are the holly bushes and the old boxwood hedges in the village, and these are often painted white with snow. Chipmunks and weasels come to nest in basements and barns; owls find their way into attics. At night,the dark is blue and bluer still, as sapphire of night.”

“She can feel his blood, just beneath his skin; when he breathes, the air fills with smoke. He's like a dragon, ancient and fearless.”

“The sky is already purple; the first few stars have appeared, suddenly, as if someone had thrown a handful of silver across the edge of the world.”

“Children would beg for a peppermint drop each time he walked into town, and they'd follow behind, asking for a second and a third. When he died suddenly, while working late at his office, every boy and girl in the village reported smelling mint in the night air, as if somehing sweet had passed them right by.”

“...early on Monday evening, when the sky was the color of a velvet ribbon falling over the hills.”

“...and so many orchards circled the village that on some crisp October afternoons the whole wold smelled like pie.”

“At first it appeared as if something with wings had fallen from above... perhaps an angel who had faltered then drowned, in tears of this poor tired world.”

“Remember what I've told you. Remember me. ”

“Some people say, 'Save yourself and you save your ways.' I say, 'Be yourself and you save your soul.”

“I'm at the point where going forward is easier than going back.”

“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.”

“My darling girl, when are you going to realize that being normal is not necessarily a virtue? It rather denotes a lack of courage." - Aunt Frances”