Alice Hoffman Quotes
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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.'
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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!
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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.
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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.
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Sometimes movies really are the best medicine.
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I think growing up is difficult and it's a process that I'm always interested in, with kids and adults, they are often on two different universes.
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Hawthorne has given us a tradition that some people refer to as Yankee Magic Realism, and I do think there is a certain quality to the landscape that definitely leads into the dark woods.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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I think we are bound to, and by, nature. We may want to deny this connection and try to believe we control the external world, but every time there's a snowstorm or drought, we know our fate is tied to the world around us.
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I don't really read as much as I used to. A lot of what I was looking for as an escape I find in writing. And the other thing is that I don't want to get into someone else's language when I'm working.
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I can't really work on more than one thing at a time.
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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 such an internal novelist.
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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.
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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.
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I feel more influenced in my own work by dreams than I do by other writers' works in a way. Or by popular culture, movies - what else is there to write about than love and loss?
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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'm much faster now. When you only have a certain amount of time to write, after a while you learn to use your time well or you stop writing.
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I always quit at three when my kids come home from school so I feel pretty spoiled.
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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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No one knows how to write a novel until it's been written.