Alice Hoffman

“No one called out my name. Finally, I went to open the door. I could smell burning metal.”

“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.”

“It was the sort of beauty you feel so deeply it becomes contagious and somehow makes you feel beautiful too.”

“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.”

“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.”

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

“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.”

“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.”

“You build your world around someone, and then what happens when he disappears? Where do you go- into pieces, into atoms, into the arms of another man? You go shopping, you cook dinner, you work odd hours, you make love to someone else on June nights. But you're not really there, you're someplace else where there is blue sky and a road you don't recognize. If you squint your eyes, you think you see him, in the shadows, beyond the trees. You always imagine that you see him, but he's never there. It's only his spirit, that's what's there beneath the bed when you kiss your husband, there when you send your daughter off to school. It's in your coffee cup, your bathwater, your tears. Unfinished business always comes back to haunt you, and a man who swears he'll love you forever isn't finished with you until he's done.”

“That is the joy of reading fiction: when all is said and done, the novel belongs to the reader and his or her imagination.”

“Do you ever just put your arms out and just spin and spin and spin? Well, that's what love is like; everything inside of you tells you to stop before you fall, but for some reason you just keep going.”

“It was as if hope had appeared out of nowhere to settle beside her and it wasn't going anywhere, it wasn't going to desert her now.”

“Feel lucky for what you have when you have it. Isn't that the point? Happily ever after doesn't mean happy forever. The ever after, what precisely was that? Your dreams, your life, your death, your everything. Was it the blank space that went on without us? The forever after we were gone? ”

“You can be betrayed in your sleep. The whole world can tilt while you're dreaming of butterflies. ”

“Every fairy tale had a bloody lining. Every one had teeth and claws.”

“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.”

“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.”

“They weren't true stories; they were better than that.”

“The weak are cruel. The strong have no need to be.”

“Be careful what you wish for. I know that for a fact. Wishes are brutal, unforgiving things. They burn your tongue the moment they're spoken and you can never take them back.”

“I was beginning to understand. My grandmother's love was cold because she was afraid of things; that was why everything had to be perfect.”

“If I hadn't learned my lesson, I would have wished we could stay there forever. But I knew better now. We'd seen what we'd come to see. The way to trick death. Breathe in. Breathe out. Watch as it all rises upwards, black and blue into the even bluer sky.”

“People hide their truest nature. I understood that; I even applauded it. What sort of world would it be if people bled all over the sidewalks, if they wept under trees, smacked whomever they despised, kissed strangers, revealed themselves?”

“Buddy had taken to Gillian in a major way. He thumped his leg, the way rabbits in love always do. He paid no attention to her frown, or the fact that she waved her hands at him, as if he were a cat to be shooed away. He trailed behind her into the living room. When Gillian stopped, Buddy sat down on the rug and looked up at her."You quit this right now," Gillian said.She wagged her finger and glared at him, but Buddy stayed where he was. He had big brown eyes that were rimmed with pink. He looked serious and dignified, even when he washed his paws with his tongue.”

“The moon is always jealous of the heat of the day, just as the sun always longs for something dark and deep.”

“There are some things, after all, that Sally Owens knows for certain: Always throw spilled salt over your left shoulder. Keep rosemary by your garden gate. Add pepper to your mashed potatoes. Plant roses and lavender, for luck. Fall in love whenever you can.”

“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.”

“Here's the thing about luck...you don't know if it's good or bad until you have some perspective.”

“Sometimes the right thing feels all wrong until it is over and done with.”

“If every life is a river, then it's little wonder that we do not even notice the changes that occur until we are far out in the darkest sea. One day you look around and nothing is familiar, not even your own face. My name once meant daughter, grandaughter, friend, sister, beloved. Now those words mean only what their letters spell out; Star in the night sky. Truth in the darkness.I have crossed over to a place where I never thought I'd be. I am someone I would have never imagined. A secret. A dream. I am this, body and soul. Burn me. Drown me. Tell me lies. I will still be who I am.”

“It doesn't matter what people tell you. It doesn't matter what they might say. Sometimes you have to leave home. Sometimes, running away means you're headed in the exact right direction.”

“The grass he walked through was new and a sweet smell clung to his clothes. There was blue dye on his hands from the wild irises... that the color of the sky was a shade that could never be replicated in any photograph, just as Heaven could never be seen from the confines of Earth.”

“Others said May was best, that sweet green time when lilacs bloomed and gardens along Main Street were filled with sugary pink peonies and Dutch tulips.”

“There was the blue sky above her and all those many roses, the ones that gave off the scent of cloves in the rain and the ones that left a trace of lemon on your fingers, the ones that were the color of blood, and those that were as white as clouds. Each one was sweeter than the next and as red as gemstones.”

“The silver trout were so numerous that if every one had turned into a star, the river would have been shining with light; a man out on a skiff would then be able to find his way past Hamilton, all the way into Boston, guided by a shimmering band of water.”

“...(roses) each one shivering with cool silver light.”

“...if anyone bothered to search through the laurel bordering the asphalt he'd surely find handfuls of teeth that were said to give the laurel its odd milky color, ivory with a pale pink edge, each blossom forming the shape of a bitter man's mouth.”

“Outside, the September air was enticingly fragrant, yellow with pollen and rich, lemony sunlight.”

“A visitor to campus can find sweet, aromatic Properity, as well as Climbing Ophelia and those delicious Egyptian Roses, which give off the scent of cloves on rainy days, ensuring that a gardener's hands will smell sweet for hours after pruning the canes.”

“In no time the perennial borders were thick with rosy-pink foxglove and cream-colored lilies, each of which hung like a pendant, collecting dew on its satiny petals.”

“...there was a storm of enormous proportions, with winds so strong that dozens of fish were drawn up from the reedy shallows, then lifted above the village in a shining cloud of scales.”

“Books may well be the only true magic.”