Alice Hoffman Quotes

Cleanliness and order are not matters of instinct; they are matters of education, and like most great things, you must cultivate a taste for them.

You rarely hear women crying in Grozney. They have cried their eyes out long ago.

I can't stand a house to be dirty or even messy, even. I am a bit OCD. Wash the dishes when you finish eating.

I was extremely close with my mother and my grandmothers, we shared our lives - fully, honestly - and it was heightened as each succumbed to cancer. Little was hidden between us. No time. And what was hidden, turned inward. I made a vow to speak. Speak or die.

I don't understand why I'm not dead. When your heart breaks, you should die

My wife would probably say I'm the messiest person in the history of husbands.

I don't smile much, and I never laugh. If you'd been through what I've been through, you wouldn't be smiling, either.

When I was 17 years old, I put out an album while my mother was dying of cancer. That right there alone is a struggle. That's hard. That's tough for anybody.

In December 1988, my mother died of lung cancer. I died too. I couldn't function.

Obviously, I got very lucky that even though I lost my mother, I lost her later in life, but it's still had a profound effect on me.

I lost my faith in God when I lost my daughter to Cancer, the beast. I begged, I cried, I offered my life for hers, and day by day, I watched that beautiful little Angel slip off. So, excuse me for not taking my seat next to you on Sunday in Church, I feel too cheated to worship.

All of a sudden their husband's dead and maybe a child is dead and they have absolutely nothing - and they're heading through the desert at night.

When I did 'Bumble-ardy,' I was so intensely aware of death. Eugene, my friend and partner, was dying here in the house when I did 'Bumble-ardy'. I did 'Bumble-ardy' to save myself. I did not want to die with him. I wanted to live, as any human being does.

When everything in a person's life is gone, ripped-out gone, it's not that you stay empty for so long, so you replace it with something else very quickly.

Neatness - which is grooming, after all - is definitely the most important requirement.

Cancer is a very sad thing, but you can always take something from every experience.

My mother died of metastatic colorectal cancer shortly before three P.M. on Christmas Day of 2008. I don't know the exact time of her death, because none of us thought to look at a clock for a while after she stopped breathing.

My mother battled cancer for 12 years before losing her fight.

I know if I react, and I want to get mad, and emotions come to the surface, I think quickly of my friends who have died and how they overcame their struggle and used their cancer and their lives for the betterment of mankind, and it sets me back in place.

There is a very moving and ancient connection between cancer and depression.

My mother, father, stepmother and surrogate mother have all died of cancer; my best friend has got terminal cancer and at least five of my other friends have had cancer but survived it.

I've seen so many women in my family, so many mothers, that have lost children in the war in such absurd ways. I wonder how they do it. How do they keep living? How do they keep smiling?

When you lose a parent at ten years old, the world seems like a much scarier place. It makes complete sense to me that I took survival courses when I was a teenager and started going to war zones as a reporter. I didn't ever want to be taken advantage of, and I wanted to be able to take care of those around me.

I lost my mom to breast cancer about three years ago, and it has changed me forever.

My mother was widowed twice before she turned forty.