The Probable Future Quotes

“Love was like that, like a dream you didn't quite understand, one in which you didn't necessarily know what you were looking at until it was right in front of you.”
― Alice Hoffman, The Probable Future

“Love ambushed you, it lay in wait, dormant for days or years. It was the red thread, the peach stone, the kiss, the forgiveness. It came after you, it escaped you, it was invisible, it was everything.”
― Alice Hoffman, The Probable Future

“Interesting, but she could see that the boy didn't have a single lie in him. A very rare condition, especially for the male of the species.”
― Alice Hoffman, The Probable Future

“When people related by blood were so careful with each other, when they were so very polite, there was soon nothing left to say. Only niceties that meant so little they might as well have been spoken to a complete stranger. Pass the butter, open the door, see you after school, there's rain again, it's sunny, it's cold. Has the dog eaten? Has the window been shut? Where are you going? Why is it I don't know you at all?

Such statements did not add up to anything like a family...”
― Alice Hoffman, The Probable Future

“what was a rose but the living proof of desire, the single best evidence of human longing and earthly devotion. but desire could be twisted,after all, and Jealousy was the name of the rose that did well in arid souls.”
― Alice Hoffman, The Probable Future

“Love was never a mistake, even when it wasn't returned.”
― Alice Hoffman, The Probable Future

“Every time a new house was built, a bucket of peach stones would be found, and even children on their way to school knew that finding one meant luck, whatever the outcome: love forgotten, love gone wrong, love despite all odds, love ever after, love after all this time.”
― Alice Hoffman, The Probable Future

“But chains made out of blood and memory were a thousand times more difficult to sever than those made of steel, and the past could overtake a person if she wasn’t careful”
― Alice Hoffman, The Probable Future

“When Juliet came flying down the hallway, Stella didn't recognize her friend. Juliet hadn't bothered with makeup; she was wearing a nightgown underneath her raincoat and had on plastic flip-flops. This was the way loved walked in, barely dressed, confused, panic-stricken, overcome, not caring what anyone thought or what they believed.”
― Alice Hoffman, The Probable Future

“You wanted a blue rose," Brock said. "Didn't you? Wasn't that the whole point?"
"Doesn't everyone want what they cannot have?"(Elinor)
"Here's what I think: it's the quest that matters."(Brock)”
― Alice Hoffman, The Probable Future

“... but where do we go?"(Elinor)
"I used to think there was a plan, a rough plan, but a plan all the same," the doctor admitted. "Now, I believe there are a thousand plans. Every breath, every decision, influences the plan, expands it, shortens it, twists it all around. It's always changing. Those of us lucky enough to make it through the multitude of possible diseases and accidents get old. We get tired. We close our eyes."
"And then? Where are we then?"
Silly to ask him as though he knew, but in fact the doctor didn't hesitate. He took Elinor's hand and placed it on his chest, in the place where he knew his heart to be.
"There."
Elinor smiled and thought at last. At last someone had told her the truth.”
― Alice Hoffman, The Probable Future

“When a person accepted a gift from someone, she was accepting the way the giver felt about her as well, any fool knew that.”
― Alice Hoffman, The Probable Future

“A breeze had come up and there was the scent of loam in the air. Hay and fertilizer. Sweet grass and wild ginger. April.”
― Alice Hoffman, The Probable Future

“This was the way love walked in, barely dressed, confused, panic-stricken, overcome, not caring what anyone thought or what they believed.”
― Alice Hoffman, The Probable Future

“Love ambushed you, it lay in wait, dormant for days or years. It was the red thread, the peach stone, the kiss, the forgiveness. It came after you, it escaped you, it was invisible, it was everything, even to someone at the very end of their life,”
― Alice Hoffman, The Probable Future

“In the dining hall of the home, Stella had seen so much death, that one Saturday morning she’d been compelled to sink down onto the linoleum floor, overwhelmed not so much by the sorrow of it all, but by the human dignity, the almost supernatural ability to face the abyss and still order scrambled eggs and toast for breakfast.”
― Alice Hoffman, The Probable Future

“We know what we need when we get it, Brock Stewart had once said. Elinor understood this to be true whenever she heard Jenny in the hallway, when she looked up from her work in the garden to see a light burning in the kitchen. She knew it when the kettle on the back burner of the stove whistled, when the back door opened and shut, when the house she lived in wasn't empty. She hadn't understood how alone she'd been until she was no longer alone. She had cut herself off...”
― Alice Hoffman, The Probable Future

“Ignore love, she now understood, and a person might bleed forever, even if no one could tell.”
― Alice Hoffman, The Probable Future

“Never agree to take a puppy for a week, Elinor knew that now. A week was all the time it took to be won over completely, despite the messes on the carpets and the shedding, the chewed slippers and shredded books.”
― Alice Hoffman, The Probable Future

“The air itself smelled of peaches, here and all over Unity; when the breeze came up, petals fell like snow. If a person didn’t move, if she was completely still, the petals streamed over her, catching in the hem of her clothes, in the strands of her hair, white as snow, quiet as snow, silent and fleeting and drifting down from above to cover her and carry her home.”
― Alice Hoffman, The Probable Future

“The doctor thought of his old horse in the field whom he missed more than he ever would have thought possible. He thought of Liza Hull kissing her baby good-bye, and of his grandson in his hospital bed, and of all the people he’d seen enter this world and those he’d helped leave it behind. He was a lucky man to be sitting beside Elinor in the garden in the last green days of May. He had loved her for so many years, he would just go on doing it, with or without”
― Alice Hoffman, The Probable Future

“Those of us lucky enough to make it through the multitude of possible diseases and accidents get old. We get tired. We close our eyes.” “And then? Where are we then?” Silly to ask him as though he knew, but in fact the doctor didn’t hesitate. He took Elinor’s hand and placed it on his chest, in the place where he knew his heart to be. “There.”
― Alice Hoffman, The Probable Future

“Love was never a mistake, even when it wasn’t returned. It was not unlike the phlox in Catherine Avery’s garden, untended, ignored, but there all the same.”
― Alice Hoffman, The Probable Future

“when somebody’s that nasty, it’s because she must have walked through fire. Those comments you’re getting are flying off her like sparks without her even knowing she’s all burned up inside.”
― Alice Hoffman, The Probable Future

“Elinor would have surely ignored them, such was her habit and her inclination, even though she knew whenever someone ignored what hurt her most, she'd wind up in grave circumstances. Ignore love, she now understood, and a person might bleed forever, even if no one could tell.”
― Alice Hoffman, The Probable Future

“Women pitied her, but went on their way; they had their own troubles to attend to, and mercy was a scarce commodity.”
― Alice Hoffman, The Probable Future

“Love could do that to some people and they wouldn't even know much they'd missed out on; they simply remained in the place where love had left them, while the whole world spun around.”
― Alice Hoffman, The Probable Future

“They believed that remembering someone could bring them back to you long after they had departed, if you only concentrated hard enough, if you stood outside on a windy night and tried to count every star sprinkled across the universe like rice on a table or stones in a lake, like bones in a body or snowdrops in the grass.”
― Alice Hoffman, The Probable Future

“Honesty was like a stone, dropped and irretrievable once it was spoken aloud”
― Alice Hoffman, The Probable Future

“The day had begun, cool and clear and absolutely impossible to avoid”
― Alice Hoffman, The Probable Future