Alice Hoffman Quotes

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Alice Hoffman

Profession : Author

Birth : March 16, 1952

Mothers always find ways to fit in the work - but then when you're working, you feel that you should be spending time with your children and then when you're with your children, you're thinking about working.

Alice Hoffman

The original fairy tale was about the youngest sister going into a room in the castle and finding all the bodies of the wives that came before her - she is confronted with truth, thinking about how often we think we know people and we really don't.

Alice Hoffman

Among men and women, those in love do not always announce themselves with declarations and vows. But they are the ones who weep when you're gone. Who miss you every single night, especially when the sky is so deep and beautiful, and the ground so very cold.

Alice Hoffman

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

Alice Hoffman

After a while, the characters I'm writing begin to feel real to me. That's when I know I'm heading in the right direction.

Alice Hoffman

I really feel like the gift is also the curse. It's always half-and-half. Whatever brings you the most joy will also probably bring you the most pain. Always a price to pay.

Alice Hoffman

I always felt and still feel that fairy tales have an emotional truth that is so deep that there are few things that really rival them.

Alice Hoffman

Ironically, now that my children are older and gone quite a bit, I find it harder to work when they're not around. Too much free time!

Alice Hoffman

You can try to take sorrow and make it into something enduring, meaningful and beautiful. I always feel guilty that this is my job, that I get to do this.

Alice Hoffman

All the characters in my books are imagined, but all have a bit of who I am in them - much like the characters in your dreams are all formed by who you are.

Alice Hoffman

I always quit at three when my kids come home from school so I feel pretty spoiled.

Alice Hoffman

Any institution becomes a community - whether it's a high school or a boarding school or a publishing company or a small town where everybody knows certain things about people.

Alice Hoffman

I can't really work on more than one thing at a time.

Alice Hoffman

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

Alice Hoffman

They were written on cheap blue notebooks bought by poor women. I'm interested in folk tales in the way that medicine and magic in women's stories are all kind of combined.

Alice Hoffman

It was a great escape for me and it was a way to take a break from what was going on in my own world, to go into another world.

Alice Hoffman

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

Alice Hoffman

I also like the whole idea of fairy tales and folk tales being a woman's domain, considered a lesser domain at the time they were told.

Alice Hoffman

I think secrets often come out. I spoke to a friend who is a therapist and I asked her if there were people who came to her and admitted to doing horrible things and she said, 'More than you know.'

Alice Hoffman

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

Alice Hoffman