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It's hard, because when you talk about process or your characters ruling your narrative, it sounds like you have no control, but obviously you're ultimately the author, so you do have control.

Alice Sebold

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Alice Sebold
Age: 62
Born: 1962
Born: September 6
Novelist
Writer
Madison
Wisconsin
Process
Narrative
Character
Ultimately
Hard
Obviously
Like
Sounds
Characters
Control
Talk
Ruling
Sound
Author

More quotes by Alice Sebold

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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.
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Nothing is ever certain.
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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.
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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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How to Commit the Perfect Murder was an old game in heaven. I always chose the icicle: the weapon melts away.
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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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Poison and medicine are often the same thing, given in different proportions
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No one on the street thought anything of the downtown girl dressed in black who had paused in the middle of midtown foot traffic. In her art student camouflage she could walk the entire length of Manhattan and, if not blend in, be classified and therefore ignored.
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There wasn't a lot of bullshit in my heaven.
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What did dead mean, Ray wondered. It meant lost, it meant frozen, it meant gone.
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I think you only learn what kind of personality you have by committing to things.
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At fourteen, my sister sailed away from me into a place I’d never been. In the walls of my sex there was horror and blood, in the walls of hers there were windows.
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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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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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Each time I told my story, I lost a bit, the smallest drop of pain. It was that day that I knew I wanted to tell the story of my family. Because horror on Earth is real and it is every day. It is like a flower or like the sun it cannot be contained.
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So there are cakes and pillows and colors galore, but underneath this more obvious patchwork quilt are places like a quiet room where you can go and hold someone's hand and not have to say anything.
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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
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Hey, Ocean Eyes,” my father said. “Where’d you go on us?
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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.
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Do you miss Susie? Because it was dark, because Ruth was facing away from her,because Ruth was almost a stranger, Lindsey said what she felt. More than anyone will ever know.
Alice Sebold