Alice Hoffman

I think growing up is difficult and it's a process that I'm always interested in, with kids and adults, they are often on two different universes.

They were written on cheap blue notebooks bought by poor women. I'm interested in folk tales in the way that medicine and magic in women's stories are all kind of combined.

You can try to take sorrow and make it into something enduring, meaningful and beautiful. I always feel guilty that this is my job, that I get to do this.

The adults don't know what's happening on the kids' universe and the kids don't know what's happening on the adults' universe.

I always quit at three when my kids come home from school so I feel pretty spoiled.

I never see a novel as a film while I'm writing it. Mostly because novels and films are so different, and I'm such an internal novelist.

Anyway, the sort of love that will not wait is probably best to pass by.

Among men and women, those in love do not always announce themselves with declarations and vows. But they are the ones who weep when you're gone. Who miss you every single night, especially when the sky is so deep and beautiful, and the ground so very cold.

I think secrets often come out. I spoke to a friend who is a therapist and I asked her if there were people who came to her and admitted to doing horrible things and she said, 'More than you know.'

I think love is a huge factor in fiction and in real life. Is there a risk? Always. In fiction and in life.

All the characters in my books are imagined, but all have a bit of who I am in them - much like the characters in your dreams are all formed by who you are.

I think we are bound to, and by, nature. We may want to deny this connection and try to believe we control the external world, but every time there's a snowstorm or drought, we know our fate is tied to the world around us.