Quotes from Alice Sebold

As if in the other side of his kiss there could ve a new life

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.

I think it's an interesting thing to me, because we have this desire for everything to be explained to us. But if you go through your daily actions, very little ends up having a written-down explanation for why things happen, or why people do specific things.

I had rescued the moment by using my camera and in that way had found how to stop time and hold it. No one could take that image away from me because I owned it.

We all work hard to understand the dynamic relationship we have with a parent.

Each time I told my story, I lost a bit, the smallest drop of pain.

The damage can fester under layers of time and change, and an ignorant, thoughtless remark can easily reopen the wound.

If I shut my eyes, I believed, I would disappear. To make it through, I had to be present the whole time.

But she was waiting patiently. She no longer believed in talk. It never rescued anything. At seventy she had come to believe in time alone. ~pg 254

I find talking about my work harder than it might be if honesty wasn't my calling card.

He took the hat from my mouth. ''Tell me you love me'', he said. Gently I did. The end came anyway

I fell in love with you again; While you were away - Jack Salmon

I don't think ignorance is a way that you gain distance on something.

There was one thing my murderer didn't understand; he didn't understand how much a father could love his child.

Sometimes you cry, Susie, even when someone you love has been gone a long time.

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.

I watched my brother and my father. The truth was very different from what we learned in school. The truth was the line between the living and the dead could be, it seemed, murky and blurred.

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

I have always felt extremely weird. But I am very happy with my weirdnesses, and I want other people to be very happy with theirs.

I was the girl he had chosen to kiss. He wanted, somehow to set me free. He didn't want to burn my photo or toss it away, but he didn't want to look at me anymore, either.

For me, heaven would be a lack of alienation. The whole time I was growing up, I felt comfort was inherently evil. I think that, for me, heaven isn't about couches and milk shakes and never having a troubling thought again.

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.

In my 20s, I railed against anything 'spiritual'; I thought it was all crap.

Like a medical procedure,' Ruth said. 'Intricate surgery is needed to patch up the planet.