“Ruth had been a girl haunted and now she would be a woman haunted. First by accident and now by choice. All… — Alice Sebold Copy Share Image
“They would go back to their homes and put me to rest, a letter from the past never reopened or reread.” — Alice Sebold Copy Share Image
“I was unable to recognize something that I would come up against time and time again. You could not be filled with… — Alice Sebold Copy Share Image
The moon is whole all the time, but we can’t always see it. What we see is an almost moon or not-quite… — Alice Sebold Copy Share Image
“Lindsey and I would lie down on the floor underneath it. I would pretend to be the knight that was pictured, and… — Alice Sebold Copy Share Image
“I loved the way the burned-out flashcubes of the Kodak Instamatic marked a moment that had passed, one that would now be… — Alice Sebold Copy Share Image
But I know I would not go out. I had taken this time to fall in love instead — in love with… — Alice Sebold Copy Share Image
I mean, if I went into my closet, I could find a previous draft and try to figure that out, but it… — Alice Sebold Copy Share Image
“I would do what I did best, I thought. I would wait. It was only a matter of time, after all.” — Alice Sebold Copy Share Image
But she was waiting patiently. She no longer believed in talk. It never rescued anything. At seventy she had come to believe… — Alice Sebold Copy Share Image
It's something that I know how to do because I taught for a very long time, so I can do it, and… — 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
She liked to imagine that when she passed, the world looked after her, but she also knew how anonymous she was. Except… — Alice Sebold Copy Share Image
I loved the way the burned-out flashcubes of the Kodak Instamatic marked a moment that had passed, one that would now be… — 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
I had rescued the moment by using my camera and in that way had found how to stop time and hold it.… — Alice Sebold Copy Share Image
“Take deep breaths and hold them. Try to stay still for longer and longer periods of time. Make yourself small and like… — Alice Sebold Copy Share Image
“How can I be expected to be trapped for the rest of my life by a man frozen in time?” — Alice Sebold Copy Share Image
The damage can fester under layers of time and change, and an ignorant, thoughtless remark can easily reopen the wound. — Alice Sebold Copy Share Image
He had a moment of clarity about how life should be lived: not as a child or as a woman. They were… — Alice Sebold Copy Share Image
Once released from life, having lost it in such violence, I couldn’t calculate my steps. I didn’t have time for contemplation. In… — Alice Sebold Copy Share Image
Each time I told my story, I lost a bit, the smallest drop of pain. It was that day that I knew… — Alice Sebold Copy Share Image
For me, heaven would be a lack of alienation. The whole time I was growing up, I felt comfort was inherently evil.… — Alice Sebold Copy Share Image
She was unaware that she was somewhat of a celebrity up in heaven. I had told people about her, what she did,… — 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
