Alice Sebold quotes: wise famous quotes, sayings and quotations by Alice Sebold

Alice Sebold Famous Quotes & Sayings

Discover top inspirational quotes from Alice Sebold on Wise Famous Quotes.

But she was waiting patiently. She no longer believed in talk. It never rescued anything. At seventy she had come to believe in time alone.

Had my brother really seen me somehow, or was he merely a boy telling beautiful lies?

If I shut my eyes, I believed, I would disappear. To make it through, I had to be present the whole time.

There was one thing my murderer didn't understand; he didn't understand how much a father could love his child.

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.

He was beginning to understand: You were treated special and, later, something horrible would be told to you.

Ll you have to do is desire it, and if you desire it enough and understand why, it will come.

I missed her then but it was an odd sort of missing because by then, I knew the meaning of forever.

Then a little voice in him said, Let go, let go, let go

Hey, Ocean Eyes," my father said. "Where'd you go on us?

If you chose to go into someone else's reality, you had to be willing to walk. There were no shortcuts.

I stared at her black hair. It was shiny like the promises in magazines.

Like a medical procedure,' Ruth said. 'Intricate surgery is needed to patch up the planet.

Heaven is comfort, but it's still not living.

If I had but an hour of love,if that be all that is given me,an hour of love upon this earth,I would give my love to thee.

Our heartache poured into one another like water from cup to cup.

Her brain was a storm, her usual insight gone.

If I was aware I would have to tie laces I would not have been able to put my feet into socks.

She had a stare that stretched to infinity.

Exactly,' she said, and made her point as simply as that. There wasn't a lot of bullshit in my heaven.

~pg 8

greatest hope. Last night it had been my father who'd

Something so divine that no one up in heaven could have made it up; the care a child took with an adult.

I don't think ignorance is a way that you gain distance on something.

When was it all right to let go not only of the dead but of the living - to learn to accept?

I felt like observing my way out of there, but I didn't.

Well, as my dad would say, it means she's out of this shithole.

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

I forgive you, I said. I said what I had to. I would die by pieces to save myself from real death.

Heaven wasn't perfect.

How to Commit the Perfect Murder was an old game in heaven. I always chose the icicle: the weapon melts away.

I'm just a friendly bystander who they occasionally ask questions of. That's my level of involvement.

Fucking bastards are simple by nature.

My name is Salmon, like the fish; first name, Susie. I was fourteen when I was murdered.

How can I be expected to be trapped for the rest of my life by a man frozen in time?

I never let myself yearn for Buckley, afraid he might see my image in a mirror or a bottle cap. Like everyone else I was trying to protect him.

The living deserve attention, too

I was raised by a solitary woman to be a solitary child, and that was, I now saw, what I had hopelessly become.

You save yourself or you remain unsaved.

People grow up by living.

She thought of sex as the Star Trek transport.You vaporized and found yourself navigating another planet within the second or two it took to realign.

How could it be that you could love someone so much and keep it secret from yourself as you woke daily so far from home?

I wasn't lost, or frozen, or gone ... I was alive; I was alive in my own perfect world.

I wanted to be a novelist for so long.

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

When all is said and done, killing my mother came easily

I'd like to go back to poetry again. I really, really revere good poetry. It's been my private discipline.

A father's suspicion...' she began.
Is as powerful as a mother's intuition.'

~pg 87, Ruana Singh and Jack Salmon

Part of the creative process for me is an invitation for readers to follow their imagination.

So much in life is about almosts, not quites.

I wanted to be the moron of the family, because morons seemed to have more fun, more freedom and more personality.

Sometimes you cry, Susie, even when someone you love has been gone a long time.

Please don't let Daddy die Susie," he whispered. "I need him.

Loss could be used as a measure of beauty in a woman.

I have a lot to be grateful for.

Where you can live at the edge of your skin for as long as you wish.

I was a soul back on Earth. AWOL a little while from heaven.

She no longer believed in talk. It never rescued anything.

When they reached the lobby and the doors opened I knew they were meant to be there, the four of them, alone.

In my 20s, I railed against anything 'spiritual'; I thought it was all crap.

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

Nothing is ever certain.

Susie?" "Yes?" "Just have fun, kid.

His cruelty was in his absence.

As she brought prospective buyers through, the realtor said it was an oil stain, but it was me, seeping out of the bag.

You're dead and you have to accept it.

I have never been shy about listening to the input of others and weighing it seriously.

I like gardening - it's a place where I find myself when I need to lose myself.

That I wanted more. That night I dreamed of kissing her again and wondered if she was thinking the same thing.

I left my mark on that man.

It was ugly and precious all at once.

The shadow of years was not as big on his small body. He knew I was away . But when people left they always came back.

I'm gradually working through my obsessions, and maybe, when they're all free and clear, I'll write a comedy. But I'm not there yet.

I think you only learn what kind of personality you have by committing to things.

But, he also said it because part of him wanted more of her, this cold woman who was not exactly cold, this rock who was not stone.

The damage can fester under layers of time and change, and an ignorant, thoughtless remark can easily reopen the wound.

I had wondered if all mothers shared a fear of how vibrant and alive their children were.

Between a man and a woman there was always one person who was stronger than the other one. That doesn't mean the weaker one doesn't love the stronger.

Placing blame was easier than adding up the mounting figures of what he'd lost.

I have always felt extremely weird. But I am very happy with my weirdnesses, and I want other people to be very happy with theirs.

Finally, I thought, I had reached the future that was no future.

She was hollow and lost and abandoned up.

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.

I was here for a moment, and then I was gone. I wish you all a long and happy life.

I would like to tell you that I am, and you will one day be, forever safe.

Murderers are not monsters, they're men. And that's the most frightening thing about them.

I wake up very early in the morning. I like to start in the dark, and I never work at night, because my brain is evaporated by 4 P.M.

He took the hat from my mouth. 'Tell me you love me', he said. Gently I did. The end came anyway

But I had made contact with a different planet from the one my parents or sister lived on. It was a planet where an act of violence changed your life.

He had been my almost. My might-have-been.
I was afraid of what I wanted most - His kiss.
Still, I collected kiss stories.
-Susie Salmon

Every day a question mark.

I feel like I'm standing in the wake of a volcano erruption.

The fine wall of leaden crystal that had protected her heart - somehow numbed her into disbelief - shattered.

Do you know how alone I've always felt?

I could not imagine my youngest standing above her soiled grandmother in the wing chair and saying, "mother, let's kill her. "That's the only choice.

I knew my mother's limitations because they formed the marrow of my bones.

I live in a world where two truths coexist: where both hell and hope lie in the palm of my hand

As if in the other side of his kiss there could ve a new life

Your sordid life is your sordid life. You shouldn't live it if you don't like it.

The living room seemed to be where no living ever actually occurred.

Try to breathe, he said, and for the first time the only thought in my head after an instruction like that wasn't Fuck you.
I breathed.