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After telling the hard facts to anyone from lover to friend, I have changed in their eyes. Often it is awe or admiration, sometimes it is repulsion, once or twice it has been fury hurled directly at me for reasons I remain unsure of.

Alice Sebold

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Alice Sebold
Age: 62
Born: 1962
Born: September 6
Novelist
Writer
Madison
Wisconsin
Changed
Lover
Sometimes
Eyes
Twice
Anyone
Directly
Hurled
Eye
Lovers
Repulsion
Often
Reasons
Unsure
Facts
Remain
Fury
Telling
Awe
Reason
Friend
Admiration
Hard

More quotes by Alice Sebold

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The living deserve attention, too
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Hold still, my father would say, while I held the ship in the bottle and he burned away the strings he'd raised the mast with and set the clipper ship free on its blue putty sea. And I would wait for him, recognizing the tension of that moment when the world in the bottle depended, solely, on me.
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I dont think ignorance is a way that you gain distance on something.
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The dead are never exactly seen by the living, but many people seem acutely aware of something changed around them. They speak of a chill in the air. The mates of the deceased wake from dreams and see a figure standing at the end of thier bed, or in a doorway, or boarding, phantomlike, a city bus.
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All you have to do is desire it, and if you desire it enough and understand why -- really know -- it will come.
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I mean, if I went into my closet, I could find a previous draft and try to figure that out, but it takes a long time for me to find the voice to tell a story in. I was working from other points of view for a couple years there.
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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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Then a little voice in him said, Let go, let go, let go
Alice Sebold
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I think you only learn what kind of personality you have by committing to things.
Alice Sebold
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I was the girl he had chosen to kiss. He wanted, somehow to set me free. He didn't want to burn my photo or toss it away, but he didn't want to look at me anymore, either.
Alice Sebold
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In my 20s, I railed against anything 'spiritual', I thought it was all crap.
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Books and novels in particular that grapple with quite a few things are difficult to explain, so I think that first line can come in a substitute for trying to form a longer sense of what the book is about.
Alice Sebold
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You save yourself or you remain unsaved.
Alice Sebold
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I'm fine with whatever comes my way, and whatever doesn't come my way I'm fine with too. I have a very laissez-faire attitude with the whole thing.
Alice Sebold
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It's very weird to succeed at thirty-nine years old and realize that in the midst of your failure, you were slowly building the life that you wanted anyway.
Alice Sebold
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Since then I've always thought that under rape in the dictionary it should tell the truth. It is not just forcible intercourse rape means to inhabit and destroy everything.
Alice Sebold
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Well, it's my voice, so it's more accessible that way, and there are also all sorts of things like plot and timelines that are already known entities, so for me, it's very different from writing fiction.
Alice Sebold
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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.
Alice Sebold
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Your first kiss is destiny knocking.
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Out loud I said I had two children. Silently I said three. I always felt like apologizing to her for that.
Alice Sebold