Top Alice Sebold Quotes - Quotesmemo.com

Alice Sebold Biography

Alice Sebold (born September 6, 1963) is an American writer. She has published three books: Lucky (1999), The Lovely Bones (2002), and The Almost Moon (2007).

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Alice Sebold Quotes

At fourteen, my sister sailed away from me into a place I’d never been. In the walls of my sex there was horror and blood, in the walls of hers there were windows.

Sex, Wall, Blood, Windows, Away

Now I am in the place I call this wide wide Heaven because it includes all my simplest desires but also the most humble and grand. The word my grandfather uses is comfort. So there are cakes and pillows and colors galore, but underneath this more obvious patchwork quilt are places like a quiet room where you can go and hold someone's hand and not have to say anything. Give no story. Make no claim. Where you can live at the edge of your skin for as long as you wish.

Galore, Hands, Humble, Live, Pillows, Quilts

You're not supposed to look back, you're supposed to keep going.

Keep, Keep Going, Look, Looks, Lovely Bones, Supposed

It's something that I know how to do because I taught for a very long time, so I can do it, and I feel a responsibility to do it - for instance, in this situation, where I'm touring specifically for this period of time. But most writers are not public people. There are a few writers out there who really enjoy it and are good at it, and can both work and do that at the same time, but I'm not one of those people.

Long, People, Responsibility, Work, Writers

Those who say they would rather fight to the death than be raped are fools. I would rather be raped a thousand times. You do what you have to.

Fighting, Fool, Fools, Raped, Say, Thousand

The relationship with the words someone uses is more intimate and integrated than just a quick read and a blurb can ever be. This intimacy - the words on the page being sent back and forth from engaged editor to open author - is unique in my experience.

Editors, Open, Quick, Sent, Unique, Use

As she stood in the darkened room and watched my sister and father, I knew one of things that heaven meant. I had a choice, and it was not to divide my family in my heart.

Choices, Divide, Father, Heart, Heaven, Stood

At the tips of the feathers there is air and at their base: blood. I hold up bones; I wish like broken glass they could court light. . . . still I try to place these pieces back together, to set them firm, to make murdered girls live again.

Bones, Girl, Girls, Glasses, Hold, Light

The earth has a mouth?” Buckley asked. A big round mouth but with no lips,” my father said. Jack,” my mother said, laughing, “stop it. Do you know I caught him outside growling at the snapdragons?

Big, Father, Know, Laughing, Mother, Stop

The stains could be seen only in the sunlight, so Ruth was never really aware of them until later, when she would stop at an outdoor cafe for a cup of coffee, and look down at her skirt and see the dark traces of spilled vodka or whiskey. The alcohol had the effect of making the black cloth blacker. This amused her; she had noted in her journal: 'booze affects material as it does people'.

Alcohol, Coffee, Dark, Look, People, Whiskey

She liked to imagine that when she passed, the world looked after her, but she also knew how anonymous she was. Except when she was at work, no one knew where she was at any time of day and no one waited for her. It was immaculate anonymity.

Anonymity, Anonymous, Except, Imagine, Time Of Day, World

She was unaware that she was somewhat of a celebrity up in heaven. I had told people about her, what she did, how she observed moments of silence up and down the city and wrote small individual prayers in her journal, and the story had travelled so quickly that women lined up to know she had found where they’d been killed. She had fans in heaven. . . . . Meanwhile, for us, she was doing important work, work that most people on Earth were too frightened even too contemplate.

Cities, Moments, People, Prayer, Small, Theyd

All you have to do is desire it, and if you desire it enough and understand why -- really know -- it will come.

Desire, Enough, Know, Knows, Understand

Each time I told my story, I lost a bit, the smallest drop of pain. It was that day that I knew I wanted to tell the story of my family. Because horror on Earth is real and it is every day. It is like a flower or like the sun; it cannot be contained.

Day, Flower, Pain, Real, Time

I was in the air around him. I was in the cold mornings he had now. I was in the quiet time he spent alone. I was the girl he had chosen to kiss. He wanted, somehow to set me free. -Susie Salmon

Cold, Free, Girl, Kissing, Morning, Quiet

You could not be filled with hate and be beautiful. Like any other girl, I wanted to be beautiful. But I was filled with hate.

Beautiful, Girl, Hate, Like

We have this desire for everything to be explained to us. But if you go through your daily actions, very little ends up having a written-down explanation for why things happen, or why people do specific things. So it made sense to me to reflect the human condition that not every action has an explanation. We act, and then later maybe come to an understanding about it, or maybe not.

Desire, Having, People, Specific, Things, Understanding

What I think was hardest for me to realize was that he had tried each time to stop himself. He had killed animals, taking lesser lives to keep from killing a child

Animal, Children, Hardest, Killing, Stop, Thinking

To transform experience and thought into language and narrative - that is beautiful even if that beauty is in brokenness.

Beautiful, Beauty, Brokenness, Language, Narrative

Out loud I said I had two children. Silently I said three. I always felt like apologizing to her for that.

Children, Felt, Loud, Three, Two

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