ASAlice Sebold

48 collected words

Alice Sebold

Dates not recorded

Name supplied in the contributor-provided quotation collection. Basic attribution label; identity, lifetime and quotation authenticity have not been independently verified.

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Quotations and sayings

01Undated

Murderers are not monsters, they're men. And that's the most frightening thing about them.

Alice Sebold / quote

02Undated

This little girl's grown up by now," she said.Almost.Not quite.I wish you all a long and happy life.

Alice Sebold / quote

03Undated

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 / quote

04Undated

He hadn't woken a day since my death when the day wasn’t something to get through. But the truth was, the memorial service day was not the worst kind. At least it was honest. At least it was a day shaped around what they were so preoccupied by: my absence. Today he would not have to pretend he was getting back to normal—whatever normal was.

Alice Sebold / quote

05Undated

How to Commit the Perfect Murder" was an old game in heaven. I always chose the icicle: the weapon melts away.

Alice Sebold / quote

06Undated

Samuel walked out to Lindsey then, and there she was in his arms, my sweet butterball babe, born ten years after my fourteen years on Earth: Abigail Suzanne. Little Susie to me. Samuel placed Susie on a blanket near the flowers. And my sister, my Lindsey, left me in her memories, where I was meant to be.

Alice Sebold / quote

07Undated

No one can pull anyone back from anywhere. You save yourself or you remain unsaved.

Alice Sebold / quote

08Undated

We lay there with our bodies touching, and as I shook, a powerful knowledge took hold. He had done this thing to me and I had lived. That was all. I was still breathing. I heard his heart. I smelled his breath. The dark earth around us smelled like what it was, moist dirt where animals lived their daily lives. I could have yelled for hours.

Alice Sebold / quote

09Undated

Try to breathe," he said, and for the first time the only thought in my head after an instruction like that wasn't Fuck you.I breathed.

Alice Sebold / quote

10Undated

Our only kiss was like an accident- a beautiful gasoline rainbow.

Alice Sebold / quote

11Undated

She liked to imagine that when she passed, the world looked after her, but she also knew how anonymous she was. Except when she was at work, no one knew where she was at any time of day and no one waited for her. It was immaculate anonymity.

Alice Sebold / quote

12Undated

For me the saddest thing was that these animals smelled the brokenness in him – the human defect – and kept away.

Alice Sebold / quote

13Undated

Out loud I said I had two children. Silently I said three. I always felt like apologizing to her for that.

Alice Sebold / quote

14Undated

I knew my mother's limitations because they formed the marrow of my bones.

Alice Sebold / quote

15Undated

Soon she noted that teachers in subjects besides gym didn't report her if she cut. They were happy not to have her there: her intelligence made her a problem. It demanded attention and rushed their lesson plans forward.

Alice Sebold / quote

16Undated

In the tunnel where I was raped, a tunnel that was once an underground entry to an amphitheater, a place where actors burst forth from underneath the seats of a crowd, a girl had been murdered and dismembered. I was told this story by the police. In comparison, they said, I was lucky.

Alice Sebold / quote

17Undated

Placing blame was easier than adding up the mounting figures of what he'd lost.

Alice Sebold / quote

18Undated

I realized how subversive Ruth was then, not because she drew pictures of nude women that got misused by her peers, but because she was more talented than her teachers. She was the quietest kind of rebel. Helpless, really.

Alice Sebold / quote

19Undated

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 / quote

20Undated

The stains could be seen only in the sunlight, so Ruth was never really aware of them until later, when she would stop at an outdoor cafe for a cup of coffee, and look down at her skirt and see the dark traces of spilled vodka or whiskey. The alcohol had the effect of making the black cloth blacker. This amused her; she had noted in her journal: 'booze affects material as it does people'.

Alice Sebold / quote

21Undated

The alcohol had the effect of making the black cloth blacker. This amused her; she had noted in her journal: "booze affects material as it does people.

Alice Sebold / quote

22Undated

I wake up very early in the morning. I like to start in the dark, and I never work at night, because my brain is evaporated by 4 P.M.

Alice Sebold / quote

23Undated

I like gardening - it's a place where I find myself when I need to lose myself.

Alice Sebold / quote

24Undated

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 / quote