Quote

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

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Alice Sebold
Age: 62
Born: 1962
Born: September 6
Novelist
Writer
Madison
Wisconsin
Succeed
Failure
Realize
Slowly
Building
Midst
Realizing
Thirty
Wanted
Anyway
Years
Weird
Life
Nine

More quotes by Alice Sebold

Image
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
Image
But I know I would not go out. I had taken this time to fall in love instead — in love with the sort of helplessness I had not felt in death — the helplessness of being alive, the dark bright pity of being human — feeling as you went, groping in corners and opening your arms to light - all of it part of navigating the unknown.
Alice Sebold
Image
The damage can fester under layers of time and change, and an ignorant, thoughtless remark can easily reopen the wound.
Alice Sebold
Image
I loved the way the burned-out flashcubes of the Kodak Instamatic marked a moment that had passed, one that would now be gone forever except for a picture.
Alice Sebold
Image
Please don't let Daddy die Susie, he whispered. I need him.
Alice Sebold
Image
People grow up by living.
Alice Sebold
Image
One thing about failing repeatedly: If you're still doing it after you've failed that much, you really mean it.
Alice Sebold
Image
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.
Alice Sebold
Image
I had always been in love with him. I counted the lashes of each closed eye. He had been my almost, my might have been, and I did not want to leave him
Alice Sebold
Image
You're not supposed to look back, you're supposed to keep going.
Alice Sebold
Image
Well, as my dad would say, it means she’s out of this shithole.
Alice Sebold
Image
Like a medical procedure,' Ruth said. 'Intricate surgery is needed to patch up the planet.
Alice Sebold
Image
I'm just a friendly bystander who they occasionally ask questions of. That's my level of involvement.
Alice Sebold
Image
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.
Alice Sebold
Image
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?
Alice Sebold
Image
I forgive you, I said. I said what I had to. I would die by pieces to save myself from real death.
Alice Sebold
Image
What did dead mean, Ray wondered. It meant lost, it meant frozen, it meant gone.
Alice Sebold
Image
You look invincible,' my mother said one night. I loved these times, when we seemed to feel the same thing. I turned to her, wrapped in my thin gown, and said: I am.
Alice Sebold
Image
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?
Alice Sebold
Image
Learn a language of another country and then you can go to that country: a place where the problems of your family will not follow. A language they do not speak.
Alice Sebold