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

More quotes by Alice Sebold

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What did dead mean, Ray wondered. It meant lost, it meant frozen, it meant gone.
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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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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.
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As if in the other side of his kiss there could ve a new life
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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.
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Sometimes the dreams that come true are the dreams you never even knew you had.
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Each time I told my story, I lost a bit, the smallest drop of pain.
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Who would have thought something that happened that long ago could have such power?
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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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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
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Stones and bones snow and frost seeds and beans and polliwogs. Paths and twigs, assorted kisses, We all know who Daddy misses! His two little frogs of girls, that’s who. They know where they are, do you, do you?
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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.
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But also I wanted him to go away and leave me be. I was granted one weak grace. Back in the room where the green chair was still warm from his body, I blew that lonely, flickering candle out
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I'm just a friendly bystander who they occasionally ask questions of. That's my level of involvement.
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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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I don't do much public speaking. I did a lot of stuff for Bones, and then ended up having said yes to a lot of things that kept me on the road for a while for that, but then I pretty much stopped. I'm touring for this book, but when the tour is done, that'll be the end of it.
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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
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She no longer believed in talk. It never rescued anything.
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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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