Alice Sebold Quotes

The problem with surviving was that you ended up with the ghosts of everyone you’d ever left behind riding on your shoulders.

If the living are haunted by the dead, then the dead are haunted by their own mistakes.

After my mother's death, I had such difficulty relating to people.

What I did, you know, being away from my family, letting so many people down. I let myself down, not being out on the football field, being in a prison bed, in a prison bunk, writing letters home, you know. That wasn't my life.

I didn't want to get divorced, but at the point where your children are part of it, you have to do something. I would really love it not to have happened because it haunts you, it will never go away, and it is probably the biggest failure, and I have to live with that.

There has been the biggest black cloud following me around. People believe it's all my fault that Steve is not here. He has always had an open door, and he doesn't choose to do this any more.

I was separated from my wife at the time. A lot of people think I wrote it about prison.

I can't even say what my greatest fear is because I, I can't even imagine. Being without my family... I can't even say it because it makes me cry.

I feel guilty about spending so much time away from home and loved ones.

Being away from the game took a toll on my heart.

I've been thinking about my life, my loss of friends, relationships, opportunities, money, my values. There's also the loss of relationship with my son and my daughter, who I've only met once. All that loss - I just got so good at blocking it out.

When my grandfather died, I was on tour, and I didn't go to the funeral. I never got to say goodbye, and this is one of the problems of being in a rock band is that you're away, and your loved ones die, and you can't even see them.

When you're young, you think you can handle anything. By the time you find out otherwise, it's already too late. You got a stocking wrapped around your neck.

We, their hearts, become fearful just thinking of loved ones who go away forever, or of moments that could have been good but weren't, or of moments that could have been found but were forever hidden in the sands.

Alone, he must bear the weight of a sin he dare not confess to the one person he loves…and has lost.

Don't ever tell anybody anything. If you do, you start missing everybody.

In this vast country that he had so loved, he was alone.

I couldn't help thinking about my dream, with Annabeth crumpled and lifeless in Luke's arms. Here I was rescuing baby monsters, but I couldn't save my friend.

MY REGRETS ARE ABOUT THE PEOPLE I COULDN’T SAVE—Marines, soldiers, my buddies. I still feel their loss. I still ache for my failure to protect them.

It didn't matter in the end how old they had been, or that they were girls, but only that we had loved them, and that they hadn't heard us calling, still do not hear us, up here in the tree house with our thinning hair and soft bellies, calling them out of those rooms where they went to be alone for all time, alone in suicide, which is deeper than death, and where we will never find the pieces to put them back together.

...I realized that I knew less about loneliness than I had thought - and much less than I would know when he went away.

‎Because if I hadn't been so afraid of everyone else, I might have told Hannah that someone cared. And Hannah might still be alive.

THE DEATH OF LEOPOLD GURSKY Leopold Gursky started dying on August 18, 1920. He died learning to walk. He died standing at the blackboard. And once, also, carrying a heavy tray. He died practicing a new way to sign his name. Opening a window. Washing his genitals in the bath. He died alone, because he was too embarrassed to phone anyone. Or he died thinking about Alma. Or when he chose not to.

Grief is not as heavy as guilt, but it takes more away from you.