Alice Hoffman Quotes

• 

  When all is said and done, the weather and love are the two elements about which one can never be sure.

  Alice Hoffman

  Topics in Love

  Tags in Faith, Elements

• He started to look at me in a manner I recognized: it was the way I looked at a new book, one I had never read before, one that surprised me with all it had to say.

  Alice Hoffman

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Books, Reading

• Books may well be the only true magic.

  Alice Hoffman

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Books
• 

  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

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Heading, Direction
• 

  It doesn’t matter what people tell you. It doesn’t matter what they might say. Sometimes you have to leave home. Sometimes, running away means you’re headed in the exact right direction.

  Alice Hoffman

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in People, Direction, Running

• 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

• 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

• 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

• 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.

  Alice Hoffman

• No one knows how to write a novel until it’s been written.

  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

• 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

• 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.

  Alice Hoffman

• 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.

  Alice Hoffman

• 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.

  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 think love is a huge factor in fiction and in real life. Is there a risk? Always. In fiction and in life.

  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 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

• 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

Alice Hoffman (36)

Birth:	16th March, 1952
Nationality:	American
Profession:	Novelist

About

Alice Hoffman was born in New York City and raised on Long Island, New York. Her grandmother was Russian. She graduated from Adelphi University with a Bachelor of Arts degree. She earned a Master of Arts degree in creative writing from Stanford University, where she was an Edith Mirrielees Fellow.
Hoffman's first job was at Doubleday, which later published two of her novels.
She wrote the screenplay for the 1983 film Independence Day, starring Kathleen Quinlan and Dianne Wiest.
Hoffman is a Scholar at the Brandeis Women's Studies Research Center.
She and her husband reside in Boston. After being treated for breast cancer at Mount Auburn Hospital in Cambridge, she helped establish the hospital's Hoffman Breast Center.

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