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 Read Quote
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 Read Quote
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 Read Quote
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 Read Quote
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 Read Quote
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. Alice Hoffman Read Quote
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. Alice Hoffman Read Quote
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 Read Quote
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 Read Quote
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 Read Quote
