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Books Quotes by Alice Hoffman

39 Books quotes by Alice Hoffman

All Books quotes Alice Hoffman’s page

Alice Hoffman shares how a novel can be a lifesaver, like when she opened a book on a dark night and felt saved. She talks about reading everywhere—on the bathtub, on trains, even with moldy pages—and how a book can feel like a life raft for a family. She also mentions a favorite time‑travel story set in Manhattan.

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“In my family, a book can be a life raft.”

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Books may well be the only true magic.

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I'm a really eclectic reader.

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No one knows how to write a novel until it's been written

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“They believed all books should be read, for as long as the reader liked.”

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Most people know that Ray Bradbury is one of my favorite authors.

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“Don't cry while you are reading the book wait until you are done reading it.”

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I heard a sigh, as though the books were breathing. I felt that this was where I belonged. This was where I…

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“Jet gave the blessing from the book of poems she had given her aunt.”

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My sorrow is I used to read all the time and now, as a writer, I don't have the time to read.

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I feel as if when you love a book it becomes a part of you whether you have it on your shelves…

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I read Betty Smith's "A Tree Grows in Brooklyn," all of Shirley Jackson's books, which I loved.

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All the characters in my books are imagined, but all have a bit of who I am in them - much like…

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I hate it when people tell me the end of the story because my mother always read the last page of a…

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I never see a novel as a film while I'm writing it. Mostly because novels and films are so different, and I'm…

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“Certainly, as a reader, I had always discovered the deepest truths in fiction; it was through reading novels that I learned about…

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“Meg was a great reader and was never without a book; while walking to school she often had one open in her…

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One of my favorites is "Time and Again" by Jack Finney. It takes place in Manhattan and goes back and forth between…

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When I read Jerome D. Salinger's "The Catcher in the Rye" that was the first time I felt my mind blow open.…

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“There's a very thin line that separates readers and writers. You make a leap over that line when there’s a book you…

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[Fairy tales] are like a journey to the woods and the many ways you can get lost. Some people say it's not…

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Our house was littered with books- in the kitchen, under the beds, stuck between the couch pillows--far too many for her the…

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“I read Greek myths. I read about far off places, Venice and Paris. I read about men who searched for things they…

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“At night I told myself a story, wordless, inside my head, one I liked far better than those in my books. The…

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“Somewhere there was a book of love, with all the symptoms written down in red ink: Dizziness and Desire. A tendency to…

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Even in times when it's difficult to figure out, how do you go forward, art - and books - always help

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I read "The Group" by Mary McCarthy. It had tons of sex in it, or so I thought at the time.

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“Lucy Green couldn't stop reading. She was a secret reader...”

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“A book doesn't live when it's written. It lives when it's read.”

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I never plot out my novels in terms of the tone of the book. Hopefully, once a story is begun it reveals…

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He started to look at me in a manner I recognized: it was the way I looked at a new book, one…

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“She kept a stack of books near the tub so she could read in the bath, even though the edges of the…

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That is the joy of reading fiction: when all is said and done, the novel belongs to the reader and his or…

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Every time I finish a book, I forget everything I learned writing it - the information just disappears out of my head

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“Her salvation was the novels she read. On nights she thought it might br better not to be alive w/o Levi in…

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I've been a screenwriter for twenty-five years. Every one of my books have been optioned for movies and I have written a…

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I did go there later, but I hadn't been there before I wrote the book. Sometimes I feel like the imagined can…

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I have nothing from my childhood. I think you carry those books with you. It's like in [Ray] Bradbury's "Fahrenheit 451." Books…

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I read everything of Ray Bradbury when I was 12 or 13, and I think that's the most effective time to read…

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More by Alice Hoffman

Women know things that men will never know. We keep the best secrets. We tell the best stories.

“All of the quarters in his hand were tarnished. He had no idea that the silver in a man’s pockets always turns black if…

But most important of all, she explained that it was all right to say 'No. I disagree.' that was a gift. I understood it…

“It was after dark when the woods were most filled with magic, when there were fireflies and the mist was rising from the streams.”

“Never look back, that's what she's told herself. Don't think about swans or being alone in the dark. Don't think of storms, or lightning…

This was what it meant to be human, to know that time moved and all things changed.

“She preferred cats to human beings and turned down every offer from the men who fell in love with her.”

I'm a really eclectic reader.

It's not the lie that's the problem; it's the distance the lie forges between you.

“Her vision was going, but she could see him, the way people see clouds-beautiful, racing by, casting shadows.”

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…

“...the summer of the gypsy moths when all the trees in their yard were bare, the leaves chewed by caterpillars. You could hear crunching…

“The best way to die is when you're living.”

“Haylin was given a good talking-to by the headmaster and made to write a paper about workers’ rights, which he considered a privilege rather…

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