by Alice Hoffman
Quotes I like:
"The moon is always jealous of the heat of the day, just as the sun always longs for something dark and deep."
"Eventually, Sally didn't have the heart to fight back. She wore dark clothes and tried not to be noticed. She pretended she wasn't smart and never raised her hand in class. She disguised her own nature so well that after a while she grew uncertain of her own abilities. In time she made sure to sit in the back and to keep her mouth firmly shut. Still they would not let her be."
"Some people cannot be warned away from disaster. You can try, you can put up every alert, but they'll still go their own way."
"If you took all the trouble most people got into and boiled it down for twenty-four hours, you'd wind up with something the size of a Snickers candy bar. But if you melted down all the trouble Gillian Owens got herself into, not to mention all the grief she caused herself, you'd have yourself a sticky old mess as tall as the statehouse in Boston."
"A baby is easier to prevent then to raise."
"She gave off a lemony oder, which was a mixture of equal parts rage and despair."
"Sometimes the right thing felt all wrong until it was over and done with."
"...it might be a good idea for everyone who works in the school to have a grin surgically applied in order to be ready when parents come in and complain. False cheer is draining though, and if you pretend long enough there's always the possibility that you'll become an automaton."
"His own mom went into therapy two weeks after he was born, that's how difficult he was and continues to be. He simply refuses to be like anyone else. He just won't allow it."
"What if she isn't as special as she thought she was? What if her beauty fades as soon as she passes eighteen, the way that it does with some girls, who have no idea that they've peaked until it's all over and they glance in the mirror to discover they no longer recognize themselves?"
"A halo around the moon is always a sign of disruption, either a change in the weather, a fever to come, or a streak of bad fortune that won't go away. But when it's a double ring, all tangled and snarled, like an agitated rainbow or a love affair gone wrong, anything can happen."
"Trouble is just like love, after all; it comes in unannounced and takes over before you've had a chance to reconsider, or even to think."
"In her opinion, everything goes wrong if you give it enough time. Close your eyes, count to three, and chances are you'll have some sort of disaster creeping up on you."
"In time you can get used to anything, including anger or fear."
..."he might as well live, he might as well say to hell with it and, for once, just go out and do as he pleases."
"She thinks it over, and what it all adds up to it spite."
"She wonders if she has something other people don't. Intuition or hope-she wouldn't know what to call it. Perhaps wht she has is the simple ability to know that something has changed and is changing still, under this dark and starry sky."
"People want to ignore what they can't understand. They're looking for logic at any cost."
"She was bad luck, ill-fated and unfortunate as the plague."
"Helplessness and anger make for predictable behavior: children are certain to shove each other and pull hair, teenagers will call each other names and cry, and grown women will say words so cruel that each syllable will take on the form of a snake, although such a snake often circles in on itself to eat its own tail once the words are said aloud."
"There's a lot of spite in this damn little town. There's a whole lot of get-even."
"She measured herself harshly. She still did."
"Even after a women proved herself innocent of any wrongdoing-that still didn't mean she'd be welcome in town or that anyone believed she wasn't guilty of something."
"You can tell just by looking at her that she never backed down or valued anyone's opinion above her own. She always believed that experience was not simply the best teacher, it was the only one."
"....Fate. As if they were meant to be together from the start and every single thing they'd ever done in their lives had been leading to this moment. If you thought that way, you could fall asleep without regret. You could put your whole life in place, with the sadness and the sorrow, and still feel that at last you had everything you'd ever wanted. In spite of the lousy odds and all the wrong turns, you might actually discover that you were the one who'd won."
"...When they don't care if they make fools of themselves, when taking a risk seems the safest thing to do, and walking a tightrope or throwing themselves into white-water rapids feels like child's play compared with a single kiss, then they'll understand what falling head over heels in love is."
"Math plus desire equals who you are." (cells + cells=heredity)
"She kept on reading. It didn't mean she wasn't listening. She had the ability to talk about one thing and concentrate on another."
"The more you pull away, the lonelier you are, until humans seem an alien race, with customs and a language you can't begin to understand."
"Pride is a funny thing; it can make what is truly worthless appear to be a treasure. As soon as you let go of it, pride shrinks to the size of a fly, but one that has no head, and no tail, and no wings with which to lift itself off the ground."
"On especially hot days, when you'd like to murder whoever crosses you, or at least give him a good slap, drink lemonade instead."
"Lightning like love, is never ruled by logic. Accidents happen, and they always will."
"What drives him is figuring out the way of things; the final factor that makes a person act that way can be so damn elusive, but you can always find some motivation, if you look hard enough. The wrong word said at the wrong time, a gun in the wrong hand, the wrong man who kisses you just right. Money, love, or fury--those are the causes for most everything. You can usually uncover the truth, or a version of it at any rate, if you ask enough questions; if you close your eyes and imagine the way it might have been, how you might have reacted if you'd had enough, if you just couldn't find it in you to care anymore."
"They know he will never deceive them or disappoint them-that's the way he's built."
"Once a moron, always a moron," she says into the phone. "Of course you know. I know you know. The real question is, Why don't you do something about it?"
"She's an idiot. Is that a federal offense? She was warped by the circumstances of her childhood, then she went out and screwed things up for herself as an adult to ensure that it would all match."
"That just goes to show you that you can never tell about a person by guessing. That's why language was invented. Otherwise, we'd all be like dogs, sniffing each other to find out where we stood."
"ATTRACTION, SHE NOW UNDERSTANDS, IS A STATE OF MIND."
"It's the color of regret, it's the color of heartbreak, the gray of doves and early morning."
"By the time she runs down the bluestone path, it doesn't make a bit of difference what other people think or what they believe."
"Always throw spilled salt over your left shoulder. Keep rosemary by your garden gate. Add pepper to your mashed potatoes. Plant roses and lavender, for luck. Fall in love whenever you can."
I liked the book. It made me feel dreamy and self-reflective. What my husband calls "bat crazy". Wouldn't we all like some special "practical magic" to turn on when we needed it?
The movie was great too. Loved the people they picked for all the parts...and the soundtrack too!
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Worry is Praying to the Wrong God
15 years ago