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I'm just a friendly bystander who they occasionally ask questions of. That's my level of involvement.

Alice Sebold

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Alice Sebold
Age: 62
Born: 1962
Born: September 6
Novelist
Writer
Madison
Wisconsin
Asks
Bystander
Bystanders
Involvement
Occasionally
Friendly
Questions
Level
Levels

More quotes by Alice Sebold

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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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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
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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
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Then a little voice in him said, Let go, let go, let go
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Like a medical procedure,' Ruth said. 'Intricate surgery is needed to patch up the planet.
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I stared at her black hair. It was shiny like the promises in magazines.
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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.
Alice Sebold
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Hey, Ocean Eyes,” my father said. “Where’d you go on us?
Alice Sebold
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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
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These things, she felt, were not to be passed around like disingenuous party favors. She kept an honor code with her journals and her poems. 'Inside, inside,' she would whisper quietly to herself when she felt the urge to tell.
Alice Sebold
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The sun came through the branches of the tree above her, and Ruth looked up past them. I think she listens, she said, too softly to be heard.
Alice Sebold
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Each time I told my story, I lost a bit, the smallest drop of pain.
Alice Sebold
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If I shut my eyes, I believed, I would disappear. To make it through, I had to be present the whole time.
Alice Sebold
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Tess was my first experience of a woman who had inhabited her weirdness, moved into the areas of herself that made her distinct from those around her, and learned how to display them proudly.
Alice Sebold
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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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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
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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.
Alice Sebold
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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
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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
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Please don't let Daddy die Susie, he whispered. I need him.
Alice Sebold