Alice Hoffman Quotes

I needed, I decided, to really know her, because I needed more to remember. Before I could begin the shameful process of forgetting the how and the why of her living and dying, I needed to learn it: How. Why. When. Where. What.

The dead are visible only in the terrible lidless eye of memory.

Whenever we give up, leave behind, and forget too much, there is always the danger that the things we have neglected will return with added force

IT happened. There is no avoiding it, no forgetting. No running away, or flying, or burying, or hiding.

There are places from which you cannot return. There is damage that can be irreparable.

He didn't want to remember anymore. remembering only hurt him... everytime.

One of the saddest things in life, is the things one remembers.

Memory is a wonderful thing if you don't have to deal with the past.

Remembering is only a new form of suffering.

He who forgets will be destined to remember.

At the temple there is a poem called "Loss" carved into the stone. It has three words, but the poet has scratched them out. You cannot read loss, only feel it.

I have a beautiful address book a friend gave me in 1966. I literally cannot open it again. Ever. It sits on the shelf with over a hundred names crossed out. What is there to say? There are no words. I'll never understand why it happened to us.

Memory is a cruel mistress with whom we all must learn to dance.

I write in blood because I remember what it felt like to bleed.

Certain words now in our knowledge we will not use again, and we will never forget them. We need them. Like the back of the picture.

Forgetting lets you live without the pain for a moment but remembering hits hard.

I try not to remember the life that I didn’t want to lose but lost and have to remember

Lessons not learned in blood are soon forgotten.

How easy it is to destroy the past and how difficult to forget it.

You never know when it will be the last time you'll see your father, or kiss your wife, or play with your little brother, but there's always a last time. If you could remember every last time, you'd never stop grieving.

She leaned down and looked at his lifeless face and Leisel kissed her best friend, Rudy Steiner, soft and true on his lips. He tasted dusty and sweet. He tasted like regret in the shadows of trees and in the glow of the anarchist's suit collection. She kissed him long and soft, and when she pulled herself away, she touched his mouth with her fingers...She did not say goodbye. She was incapable, and after a few more minutes at his side, she was able to tear herself from the ground. It amazes me what humans can do, even when streams are flowing down their faces and they stagger on.

I know when dark-haired evening put on her bright silk at sunset, and, folding the sea sidled under the sheet with her starry laugh, that there'd be no rest, there'd be no forgetting. Is like telling mourners round the graveside about resurrection, they want the dead back.

Everything else was in the past, and the past no longer mattered.

Your life is what you remember. I mean, some things I wish I still had. But it doesn't matter.