"For more than two hundred years, the Owens women have been blamed for everything that has gone wrong in town. If a damp spring arrived, if cows in the pasture gave milk that was runny with blood, if a colt died of colic or a baby was born with a red birthmark stamped onto his cheek, everyone believed that fate must have been twisted, at least a little, by those women over on Magnolia Street. It didn't matter what the problem was-lightning, or locusts, or a death by drowning. It didn't matter if the situation could be explained by logic, or science, or plain bad luck. As soon as there was a hint of trouble or the slightest misfortune, people began pointing their fingers and placing blame. Before long they'd convinced themselves that it wasn't safe to walk past the Owens house after dark, and only the most foolish neighbors would dare to peer over the black wrought-iron fence that circled the yard like a snake. (beginning)"
Quote Details
Added by wikiquote-import-bot
Unverified quote
0 likes
Children's authorsJews from the United StatesWomen authors from the United StatesYoung adult authorsMagic realism authors
Original Language: English
Available Languages (1)
Sources
Imported from EN Wikiquote
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Alice_Hoffman
Revision History
No revisions have been submitted for this quote.
Categories
Alice Hoffman
Alice Hoffman (born March 16, 1952) is an American novelist and young-adult and children's writer, best known for her 1995 novel Practical Magic, which was adapted for a 1998 film of the same name. Many of her works fall into the genre of magic realism and contain elements of magic, irony, and non-standard romances and relationships.
78 quotes on TrueQuotesView all quotes by Alice Hoffman →
Related Quotes
"She liked to disappear, even when she was in the same room as other people. It was a talent, as it was a curse."
"What you dream, you can grow."
"Artists have themes that they go back to—that they are haunted by and obsessed with."
"I think it's bad for writers to think too much about what their themes are, or to over-intellectualize their own work…"
"The weak are cruel. The strong have no need to be."
"He started to look at me in a manner I recognized: it was the way I looked at a new book, one I had never read before…"
"When all is said and done, the weather and love are the two elements about which one can never be sure."
"“For me—as I think it is for a lot of women and girls—I felt that they were figures that had power, and I felt very p…"
"It is clear when reading about the Holocaust that evil exists. But what was less apparent to me until I began to do r…"
"The persecution of people who are different, whether it's women as witches, whether it's Jews, whoever it is, it alwa…"