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Alice Sebold

Alice Sebold Quotes

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Famous Alice Sebold Quotes

“Now I am in the place I call this wide wide Heaven because it includes all my simplest desires but also the most humble and grand. The word my grandfather uses is comfort. So there are cakes and pillows and colors galore, but underneath this more obvious patchwork quilt are places like a quiet room where you can go and hold someone's hand and not have to say anything. Give no story. Make no claim. Where you can live at the edge of your skin for as long as you wish.”

GivingLongStoriesUseHandsDesireHeavenWishRoomsColorComfortQuietSkinsClaimsEdgesObviousHumbleWideCakeGrandfatherSay AnythingSimplestMy GrandfatherPillowQuiltsPatchworkQuiet RoomPatchwork Quilt
Book:The Lovely Bones: Picador Classic
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“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 would pull me into his lap and reach for the snow globe. He would turn it over, letting all the snow collect on the top, then quickly invert it. The two of us watched the snow fall gently around the penguin. The penguin was alone in there, I thought, and I worried for him. When I told my father this, he said, "Don't worry, Susie; he has a nice life. He's trapped in a perfect world.”

WorldLittlesSaidTwoTurnsFallFatherWhitePerfectWorryNiceRedBonesSnowWorriedTrappedGlobesDesksLapA Perfect WorldScarvesPenguinsTwo Of UsSnow FallingNice LifeInvertLovely BonesRed And White
Book:The Lovely Bones
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“These were the lovely bones that had grown around my absence: the connections-sometimes tenuous, sometimes made at great cost, but often magnificent-that happened after I was gone. And I began to see things in a way that let me hold the world without me in it. The events that my death wrought were merely the bones of a body that would become whole at some unpredictable time in the future. The price of what I came to see as this miraculous body had been my life.”

WorldWayMadeSometimesWholeBodyGoneHappenedEventsCostConnectionsLet MeBonesAbsenceLovelyMagnificentUnpredictableMiraculousLovely Bones
Author:Alice Sebold
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“He tunneled into stories where weak men changed into strong half-animals or used eye beams or magic hammers to power through steel or climb up the sides of skyscrapers. He was the Hulk when angry and Spidey the rest of the time. When he felt his heart hurt he turned into something stronger than a little boy, and he grew up this way. A heart that flashed from heart to stone, heart to stone. As I watched I thought of what Grandma Lynn liked to say when Lindsey and I rolled our eyes or grimaced behind her back. "Watch out what faces you make. You'll freeze that way.”

MenWayHeartLittlesStoriesEyeFacesUsedStrongFeltSidesHurtAnimalBehindsHalfBoysWatchesMagicChangedGrewGrew UpStonesWeakStrongerAngryClimbsSteelHammersGrandmaFreezeLittle BoysBeamSkyscraperWeak ManHeart Of StoneHeart Hurts
Book:The Lovely Bones: Picador Classic
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“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'.”

PeopleLooksDoeBlackDarkEffectsMaterialsAlcoholCoffeeCupsSunlightJournalWhiskeySkirtsStainsAmusedCoffee CupBoozeVodkaCafesRuth
Author:Alice Sebold
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“His love for my mother wasn't about looking back and loving something that would never change. It was about loving my mother for everything -- for her brokenness and her fleeing, for her being there right then in that moment before the sun rose and the hospital staff came in. It was about touching that hair with the side of his fingertip, and knowing yet plumbing fearlessly the depths of her ocean eyes.”

MomentsEyeMotherSidesSunKnowingHairOceanRoseDepthThat MomentHospitalsTouchingLooking BackStaffHis LoveNever ChangeBeing ThereBrokennessFingertipsFleeingPlumbingLove For My MotherLoving Something
Book:The Lovely Bones: Picador Classic
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“Sometimes Holly seemed like she wasn't paying attention, and other times she was gone when I went looking for her. That was when she went to a part of heaven we didn't share. I missed her then, but it was and odd sort of missing because by then I knew the meaning of forever. I could not have what I wanted most: Mr. Harvey dead and me living. Heaven wasn't perfect. But I came to believe that if I watched closely, and desired, I might change the lives of those I loved on Earth.”

IfsBelieveSometimesMightWantedEarthHeavenPerfectAttentionGoneForeverShareMissingPay AttentionOddHarveyHollies
Author:Alice Sebold
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“She sat in her room on the couch my parents had given up on and worked on hardening herself. Take deep breaths and hold them. Try to stay still for longer and longer periods of time. Make yourself small and like a stone. Curl the edges of yourself up and fold them under where no one can see. ~pg 29, Susie's sister Lindsey dealing with grief.”

TryingStillsGivenParentRoomsGriefPeriodsStonesBreathsEdgesSatFoldsGiven UpCouchesCurlsDeep Breath
Author:Alice Sebold
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“My father had not been outside the house except to drive back and forth to work or sit out in the backyard, for months, nor had he seen his neighbors. Now he looked at them, from face to face, until he realized I had been loved by people he didn't even recognize. His heart filled up, warm again as it had not been in what seemed so long to him- save small forgotten moments with Buckley, the accidents of love that happened with his son. ~pgs 209-210; Buckley, Lindsey and Jack on Susie”

PeopleHeartLongMomentsFacesFatherHouseHappenedSonMonthsFilledForgottenWarmAccidentsNeighborBack And ForthFace To FaceBackyardsFilled UpHeart Filled
Book:The Lovely Bones: Picador Classic
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“I couldn't help but think, as I watched him, of the barrels of toxic fluids that had accrued behind Hal's bike shop where the scrub lining the railroad tracks had offered local companies enough cover to dump a stray contaner or two. Everything had been sealed up, but things were beginning to leak out. I had come to both pity and respect Len in the years since my mother left. He followed the physical to try to understand things that were impossible to comphrehend. In that, I could see, he was like me.”

ThinkingTryingYearsTwoEnoughHelpingMotherLeftBehindsCompanyImpossibleTrackLocalsLike MePityShopsToxicBikeFluidBarrelsDumpRailroadsLeaksRailroad Tracks
Author:Alice Sebold
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“My grandmother stepped back into the kitchen to get their drinks. I had come to love her more after death than I ever had on Earth. I wish I could say that in that moment in the kitchen she decided to quit drinking, but I now saw that drinking was a part of what made her who she was. If the worst of what she left on Earth was a legacy of inebriated support, it was a good legacy in my book. ~Susie's grandmother, Lynn pgs 315-316”

IfsMadeBookMomentsEarthLeftWishSupportSawsWorstDrinkDecidedDrinkingQuittingLegacyKitchenGrandmotherThat MomentMy GrandmotherAfter DeathQuit Drinking
Author:Alice Sebold
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“Everyday he got up. Before sleep wore off, he was who he used to be. Then, as his consciousness woke, it was as if poison seeped in. At first he couldn't even get up. He lay there under a heavy weight. But then only movment could save him, and he moved and he moved and he moved, no movement being enough to make up for it. The guilt on him, the hand of God pressing down on him, saying, You were not there when your daughter needed you.”

IfsFirstsEnoughHandsUsedSleepConsciousnessMovementNeededDaughterWeightMovedLaysGuiltEverydayHeavyUsed To BeGet UpPoisonHands Of GodYour DaughterHeavy Weights
Author:Alice Sebold
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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.”

PeopleEndsDreamSeemsSpeakCitiesAirFiguresChangedBedStandingBusMatesChillDoorwaysDeceasedCity Bus
Book:The Lovely Bones: Picador Classic
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“I knew something as I watched: almost everyone was saying goodbye to me. I was becoming one of the many little-girl-losts. They would go back to their homes and put me to rest, a letter from the past never to be reopened or reread. And I could say goodbye to them, wish them well, bless them somehow for their good thoughts. A handshake in the street, a dropped item picked up and retrieved and handed back, or a friendly wave from the distant window, a nod, a smile, a moment when the eyes lock over the antics of a child.”

WellsChildrenLittlesMomentsHomeEyePastGirlLostWishStreetsBecomingWindowLettersWaveGoodbyeFriendlyBlessLocksItemsSaying GoodbyeGood ThoughtsHandshakeBecoming OneAntics
Author:Alice Sebold
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