Quote

There was our father, the heart we knew held all of us. Held us heavily and desperately, the doors of his heart opening and closing with the rapidity of stops on an instrument, the quiet felt closures, the ghostly fingering, practice and practice and then, incredibly, sound and melody and warmth.

Alice Sebold

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Alice Sebold
Age: 62
Born: 1962
Born: September 6
Novelist
Writer
Madison
Wisconsin
Sound
Incredibly
Closure
Father
Held
Heavily
Felt
Opening
Desperately
Heart
Instruments
Closing
Quiet
Stops
Closures
Doors
Warmth
Fingering
Knew
Melody
Rapidity
Practice
Instrument
Ghostly

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I was trying to prove to them and to myself that I was still who I had always been. I was beautiful, if fat. I was smart, if loud. I was good, if ruined.
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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. ~pg 254
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Your first kiss is destiny knocking.
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When the dead are done with the living, the living can go on to other things, Franny said. What about the dead? I asked. Where do we go?
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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.
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Poison and medicine are often the same thing, given in different proportions
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Like a medical procedure,' Ruth said. 'Intricate surgery is needed to patch up the planet.
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Murder had a blood red door on the other side of which was everything unimaginable to everyone.
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She sat in her room on the couch my parents had given up on and worked on hardening herself. Take deep breaths and hold them. Try to stay still for longer and longer periods of time. Make yourself small and like a stone. Curl the edges of yourself up and fold them under where no one can see. ~pg 29, Susie's sister Lindsey dealing with grief.
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I wanted to be the moron of the family, because morons seemed to have more fun, more freedom and more personality.
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I live in a world where two truths coexist: where both hell and hope lie in the palm of my hand
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The moon is whole all the time, but we can’t always see it. What we see is an almost moon or not-quite moon. The rest is hiding just out of view, but there’s only one moon, so we follow it in the sky. We plan our lives based on its rhythms and tides.
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The sun came through the branches of the tree above her, and Ruth looked up past them. I think she listens, she said, too softly to be heard.
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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.
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She didn't even have to smile, and she rarely did outside her house--it was the eyes, her dancer's carriage, the way she seemed to deliberate over the smallest movement of her body.
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I forgive you, I said. I said what I had to. I would die by pieces to save myself from real death.
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There wasn't a lot of bullshit in my heaven.
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Sometimes you cry, Susie, even when someone you love has been gone a long time.
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Each time I told my story, I lost a bit, the smallest drop of pain.
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I dont think ignorance is a way that you gain distance on something.
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