Share
×
Inspirational Quotes
Authors
Professions
Topics
Tags
Quote
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
Share
Change background
T
T
T
Change font
Original
TAGS & TOPICS
Alice Sebold
Age: 62
Born: 1962
Born: September 6
Novelist
Writer
Madison
Wisconsin
Firsts
Longer
Book
Particular
Grapple
Come
Quite
Substitute
First
Lines
Substitutes
Trying
Books
Novels
Things
Difficult
Explain
Think
Sense
Line
Thinking
Form
Novel
More quotes by Alice Sebold
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.
Alice Sebold
Sometimes you cry, Susie, even when someone you love has been gone a long time.
Alice Sebold
People grow up by living.
Alice Sebold
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.
Alice Sebold
When I was raped I lost my virginity and almost lost my life. I also discarded certain assumptions I had held about how the world worked and about how safe I was.
Alice Sebold
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
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.
Alice Sebold
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
Alice Sebold
Before, they had never found themselves broken together. Usually, it was one needing the other but not both needing each other, and so there had been a way, by touching, to borrow from the stronger one's strength.
Alice Sebold
When the music stopped, it could have been forever since we'd begun. My grandfather took a step back, and the light grew yellow at his back. 'I'm going,' he said. 'Where?' I asked. 'Don't worry, sweetheart. You're so close.' He turned and walked away, disappearing rapidly into spots and dust. Infinity.
Alice Sebold
I'm just a friendly bystander who they occasionally ask questions of. That's my level of involvement.
Alice Sebold
How could it be that you could love someone so much and keep it secret from yourself as you woke daily so far from home?
Alice Sebold
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.
Alice Sebold
He had been my almost. My might-have-been. I was afraid of what I wanted most - His kiss. Still, I collected kiss stories. -Susie Salmon
Alice Sebold
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
Life is a perpetual yesterday for us.
Alice Sebold
One thing about failing repeatedly: If you're still doing it after you've failed that much, you really mean it.
Alice Sebold
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
I would do exactly what you are doing: I would talk to everyone I needed to, I would not tell too many people his name. When I was sure, she said, I would find a quiet way, and I would kill him.
Alice Sebold
The relationship with the words someone uses is more intimate and integrated than just a quick read and a blurb can ever be. This intimacy - the words on the page being sent back and forth from engaged editor to open author - is unique in my experience.
Alice Sebold
