"Any institution becomes a community - whether it's a high school or a boarding school or a publishing company or a small town where everybody knows certain things about people"
About this Quote
Even the most bureaucratic place gathers its own weather: rituals that repeat, nicknames that stick, stories that travel faster than memos. A high school is a hothouse of reputations; a boarding school deepens the intensity through proximity; a publishing company forms a village with hierarchies, alliances, and folklore about who can make or break a manuscript. A small town simply makes the dynamic obvious. Wherever people gather regularly, they shape one another through the knowledge they share and the knowledge they pretend not to have.
The phrase "everybody knows certain things about people" matters. It acknowledges the partial nature of communal knowing: bits of biography, rumors, a single dramatic incident that becomes a defining label. These fragments become shorthand, guiding how doors open or close, how kindness is extended or withheld. Such knowledge binds and protects, but it also confines. Being recognized can feel like belonging; being known only by a story can feel like a sentence.
Alice Hoffman has long been drawn to the alchemy by which everyday lives become local myth. In her fiction, small towns and close-knit workplaces teem with interwoven fates, where rumor edges into folklore and ordinary gestures carry a charge of enchantment. The line reflects a recurring concern in her work: the double-edged power of community. Shared memory can cradle the vulnerable, stitch together grief, and create responsibility. It can also sanctify suspicion, ossify roles, and turn difference into a target.
"Becomes" suggests a transformation over time, born of repetition and attention. The bell rings, the meeting starts, the lights go down, and gradually a collection of individuals turns into a chorus, humming with expectations. The task, Hoffmans fiction suggests, is to be mindful of the stories we pass along, to widen what counts as known, and to leave room for people to be more than their most legible acts. We make communities wherever we are; the question is what kind we choose to make, and at whose expense or benefit.
The phrase "everybody knows certain things about people" matters. It acknowledges the partial nature of communal knowing: bits of biography, rumors, a single dramatic incident that becomes a defining label. These fragments become shorthand, guiding how doors open or close, how kindness is extended or withheld. Such knowledge binds and protects, but it also confines. Being recognized can feel like belonging; being known only by a story can feel like a sentence.
Alice Hoffman has long been drawn to the alchemy by which everyday lives become local myth. In her fiction, small towns and close-knit workplaces teem with interwoven fates, where rumor edges into folklore and ordinary gestures carry a charge of enchantment. The line reflects a recurring concern in her work: the double-edged power of community. Shared memory can cradle the vulnerable, stitch together grief, and create responsibility. It can also sanctify suspicion, ossify roles, and turn difference into a target.
"Becomes" suggests a transformation over time, born of repetition and attention. The bell rings, the meeting starts, the lights go down, and gradually a collection of individuals turns into a chorus, humming with expectations. The task, Hoffmans fiction suggests, is to be mindful of the stories we pass along, to widen what counts as known, and to leave room for people to be more than their most legible acts. We make communities wherever we are; the question is what kind we choose to make, and at whose expense or benefit.
Quote Details
| Topic | Wisdom |
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