Top 19 Alice Hoffman Quotes

I don’t think I make much of a distinction between the ‘real’ and the ‘fantastic.’ They both seem to be threads in the same cloth as far as I’m concerned.

The adults don’t know what’s happening on the kids’ universe and the kids don’t know what’s happening on the adults’ universe.

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!

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.’

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

I’ve been a screenwriter for twenty-five years. Every one of my books have been optioned for movies and I have written a few of those screenplays.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.