Alice Hoffman

Love someone and they're yours forever

Do people choose the art that inspires them _ do they think it over, decide they might prefer the fabulous to the real? For me, it was those early readings of fairy tales that made me who I was as a reader and, later on, as a storyteller.

I thought he knew me better than most...Then one nigh Jack brought me flowers, a handful of fading daisies he'd picked up at a farm stand, but flowers all the same. That was the end; that was how he ruined everything.

In good time every secret must be shared and every miracle called into question.

As for Gus, he had come to Haddan with no appreciation for the human race and no expectations of his fellow man. He was full ready to confront contempt; he'd been beleaguered and insulted often enough to have learned to ignore anything with a heartbeat. Still, every once in a while he made an exception, as he did with Carlin Leander. He appreciated everything about Carlin and lived for the hour when they left their books and sneaked off to the graveyard. Not even the crow nesting in the elm tree could dissuade him from his mission, for when he was beside Carlin, Gus acquired a strange optimism; in the light of her radiance the rest of the world began to shine. For a brief time, bad faith and human weakness could be forgotten or, at the very least, temporarily ignored. When it came time to go back to their rooms, Gus followed on the path, holding on to each moment, trying his best to stretch out time. Standing in the shadows of the rose arbor in order to watch Carlin climb back up the fire escape at St. Anne's, his heart ached. He could tell he was going to be devastated, and yet he was already powerless. Carlin always turned and waved before she stepped through her window and Gus Pierce always waved back, like a common fool, an idiot of a boy who would have done anything to please her.

Crying wasn't like riding a bike. Give it up, and you quickly forget how it's done.

I only had access to him when we were together in the library, and I loved them both -the library and my father- equally and without question.

Here's the thing about luck...you don't know if it's good or bad until you have some perspective.

Demons were said to be cruel, but a demon would never have been so brutal as this. A demon merely called you by name, threw his arms around you, whispered his plight, understood yours, then took you for his own.

What was a demon but a lost soul, one that had been forced to use his skills to survive.

I knew the power of a single wish, after all. Invisible and inevitable, like a butterfly that beats its wings in one corner of the globe and with that single action changes the weather halfway across the world.

I wasn't good company, that was true, and people avoided me, but that was all right. I was too busy dreaming.

They say that dogs may dream, and when Topsy was old, his feet would move in his sleep. With his eyes closed he would often make a noise that sounded quite human, as if greeting someone in his dreams. At first it seemed that he believed Sara would return, but as the years went by I understood that his loyalty asked for no reward, and that love comes in unexpected forms. His wish was small, as hers had been -- merely to be beside her. As for me, I already knew I would never get what I wanted.

Sam said, Hey, you want to get high? Amy had taken his words to mean You are so beautiful I am undone by you.

Stone should last forever, but on that night I came to understand that a stone was only another form of dust. Streams of holy dust loomed in the air, and every breath included remnants of the Temple, so that we inhaled that which was meant to stand through eternity.

She understood love. What destroys you saves you, she had told me.

You should never trust a liar so you should never trust a man of honor. Those two are the worst of mankind.

You can get addicted to trouble if you're not careful.