“There are secret rooms inside us,” I had said to my therapist. “A relatively benign construct,” he said, and so I did… — Alice Sebold Copy Share Image
“My little brother's greatest fear was that the one person who meant so much to him would go away. He loved Lindsey… — Alice Sebold Copy Share Image
Inside the snow globe on my father's desk, there was a penguin wearing a red-and-white-striped scarf. When I was little my father… — Alice Sebold Copy Share Image
“My father worked behind closed doors inside the house, had a huge ancient Latin dictionary on a wrought-iron stand, spoke Spanish on… — Alice Sebold Copy Share Image
His love for my mother wasn't about looking back and loving something that would never change. It was about loving my mother… — Alice Sebold Copy Share Image
“On my way home from the junior high, I would sometimes stop at the edge of our property and watch my mother… — Alice Sebold Copy Share Image
“She climbed down the cliffs after tying her sweater loosely around her waist. Down below she could see nothing but jagged rocks… — Alice Sebold Copy Share Image
We all work hard to understand the dynamic relationship we have with a parent. — Alice Sebold Copy Share Image
“My mother gave Lindsey a meaningful look. 'We are not discussing this further. You can go up to your room and wait… — Alice Sebold Copy Share Image
“Judging Natalie as my mother had judged me was, I felt like telling her son, just my ass-backward way of showing love.… — Alice Sebold Copy Share Image
There was our father, the heart we knew held all of us. Held us heavily and desperately, the doors of his heart… — Alice Sebold Copy Share Image
It was Buckley, as my father and sister joined the group and listened to Grandma Lynn’s countless toasts, who saw me. He… — Alice Sebold Copy Share Image
You look invincible,' my mother said one night. I loved these times, when we seemed to feel the same thing. I turned… — Alice Sebold Copy Share Image
As she stood in the darkened room and watched my sister and father, I knew one of things that heaven meant. I… — Alice Sebold Copy Share Image
She sat in her room on the couch my parents had given up on and worked on hardening herself. Take deep breaths… — Alice Sebold Copy Share Image
Hold still," my father would say, while I held the ship in the bottle and he burned away the strings he'd raised… — Alice Sebold Copy Share Image
“Outside the hospital, a young girl who was selling small bouquets of daffodils, their green stems tied with lavender ribbons. I watched… — Alice Sebold Copy Share Image
“She had a stare that stretched to infinity. She was, in that moment, not my mother but something separate from me.” — Alice Sebold Copy Share Image
“Buckley followed the three of them into the kitchen and asked, as he had at least once a day, “Where’s Susie?” They… — Alice Sebold Copy Share Image
“She was in the downstairs bathroom sneaking bites from the macaroons my father's firm always sent us for Christmas. She ate them… — Alice Sebold Copy Share Image
My father had not been outside the house except to drive back and forth to work or sit out in the backyard,… — Alice Sebold Copy Share Image
“For three nights he hadn't known how to touch my mother or what to say. Before, they had never found themselves broken… — Alice Sebold Copy Share Image
“Since then he had taken these photos out too many times to count, but each time he looked into the face of… — Alice Sebold Copy Share Image
“Inside the room it was dark now, the florescent light behind my father flickering so slightly it lit only the most obvious… — Alice Sebold Copy Share Image
Now I am in the place I call this wide wide Heaven because it includes all my simplest desires but also the most humble… — Alice Sebold Copy Share Image
These things, she felt, were not to be passed around like disingenuous party favors. She kept an honor code with her journals and her… — Alice Sebold Copy Share Image
I don't think ignorance is a way that you gain distance on something. — Alice Sebold Copy Share Image
“There are secret rooms inside us,” I had said to my therapist. “A relatively benign construct,” he said, and so I did not bother… — Alice Sebold Copy Share Image
“And a soul would run by a living being, touch them softly on the shoulder or cheek, and continue on its way to heaven.… — Alice Sebold Copy Share Image
“My little brother's greatest fear was that the one person who meant so much to him would go away. He loved Lindsey and Grandma… — Alice Sebold Copy Share Image
“She listened for the pain in my words, not to the narrative itself. She was intuiting what it meant to me, what was most… — Alice Sebold Copy Share Image
The relationship with the words someone uses is more intimate and integrated than just a quick read and a blurb can ever be. This… — Alice Sebold Copy Share Image
