Alice Hoffman Quotes

A real book is not one that we read, but one that reads us.

My first encounter with James was when I was seventeen. My brother brought home from the public library a science fiction anthology, which included 'The Beast in the Jungle.' It swept me away. I had a strange, somewhat uncanny feeling that it was the story of my life.

I think I had a particular moment when I was 15 years old. I read 'Crime and Punishment,' and that book just, I think, more than any other book made me want to be a writer, 'cause it was the first time that I hadn't just entered a book, but a book had entered me.

It's possible of course, especially when you're young, to read a book and take it to your heart. And you don't need to speak to anybody about it - it's so important to you: You have found it.

Then I read Little Women, and of course, like a lot of really young girls, I was very taken with Jo - Jo being the writer and the misfit.

'Moby-Dick' really threw me. I read it when I was 14 and my best friends were books. It changed the way I looked at the world.

'Island of the Blue Dolphins' by Scott O'Dell had a huge impact on me.

I'll always be grateful for 'Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret.' It brought me many, many, readers.

I read 'Love in the Time of Cholera' when I was 19, and I still think about the characters.

In books I have traveled, not only to other worlds, but into my own.

Good books put a finger on emotions that are deeply our own - but that we could never have described on our own.

'Dawson's Creek' was my college experience.

I remember reading 'Catcher in the Rye,' but I don't think I got it.

When I first saw 'Fast Times at Ridgemont High,' I thought: That's what my life is like. That's my day-to-day.

I had never heard of 'young adult novels,' which I guess are about teenage gangs and the new boy in town or something.

'The Giver' by Lois Lowry - I had to read this in school, and I fell in love with it. It was my favorite book as a child, and I read and reread it. I would pretend I lived in that world and that Asher was my best friend.

Jughead, to me, was reflective of a teen experience that made a lot of sense to me.

As a teenager, I read a lot of science-fiction, but then I read 'Catch-22' and 'The Catcher in the Rye' and started reading more literary fiction.

When I was in the YA age range myself, I didn't feel like there were a lot of books for me.

I read Gide's 'The Immoralist' over and over as a teenager. I was obsessed with it. It's written with such simplicity and dread, and the desert, the shabby colonial world, is brought right into your consciousness without being over-explained.

I write books for teenagers because I vividly remember what it felt like to be a teen facing everyday and epic dangers. I don't write to protect them. It's far too late for that. I write to give them weapons-in the form of words and ideas-that will help them fight their monsters. I write in blood because I remember what it felt like to bleed.

Some books seem like a key to unfamiliar rooms in one’s own castle.

As an adolescent, Vonnegut made my life bearable.

My parents are pretty liberal. But they were just you know trying to look out for my innocence or whatever. But my babysitter had "Forever" [by Judy Blume]. And I said "Well I've read Judy Blume books, can I borrow that?" And she said no, this one's not appropriate for you. Which obviously, got me really worked up. So I took it.

This sounds corny, but I once told a kid when I was in a the library conference, the best - not the best, what I really hope for is that someday 20, 30 years from now, some kid, 12-year-old, 15-year-old, in Des Moines will be going through the stacks, if they have stacks anymore - they probably won't - and find a book of mine and get something from it.