Don't forget books. What would life be without them? Emily Brontë, Edgar Allan Poe, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Toni Morrison, Jane Austen, William Faulkner… - Alice Hoffman

"We must hope for the best," she told the girl. She might have said more if she'd had the freedom to speak her mind, but in her formation she hadn't been given the choice to confide what she felt. If she could do so there would have been much she would have said: how green the verdant countryside was, how bright the light had become, how grateful she was to her maker each and every minute, how the birds in the treetops could be heard even when the train rumbled by, how the first of the season's bees hit against the windowpanes as if searching for flowers, how absolutely marvelous it was to be in the world. (p72)

This is how it began, out of water, out of clay, out of air, when it was not expected, when it should have never happened, when no one else understood who she was. (p113)

(Have you noticed a change in the industry toward women writers since you began writing?) AH: I don't think women are treated the same as men in anything, so why would they be treated the same in literature? I think that there's a different standard, and it's difficult for women, even though, weirdly, it's women who read the most fiction. I don't know what the right word for it is, but I think that some women writers are not looked at with the same kind of respect or seriousness.