Alice Sebold Quotes

I talk a lot about strength, faith and love, but I don't ever talk about the fact that I am one of the most sensitive people in my family. That might be the most shocking, because you always see me fighting the good fight, with the strong face on, but I am the most emotional.

No destiny attacks us from outside. But, within him, man bears his fate and there comes a moment when he knows himself vulnerable; and then, as in a vertigo, blunder upon blunder lures him.

I sometimes feel that I'm impersonating the dark unconscious of the whole human race. I know this sounds sick, but I love it.

For in a swift radiance of illumination he saw a glimpse of human struggle and valor. Of the endless fluid passage of the humanity through endless time. And of those who labor and of those who - one word- love. His soul expanded. But for a moment only. For in him, he felt a warning, a shaft of terror.

When you fall in love, love deeply. Be tough but also be open to the possibility of forgiveness.

It is tragic and sad and chaotic and lovely. All life is the same, as citizens of the human State: the animating limits are within, to be killed and mourned, over and over again.

Could you really love someone who was capable of falling in love with somebody else?

Whatever is the lot of humankind I want to taste within my deepest self. I want to seize the highest and the lowest, to load its woe and bliss upon my breast, and thus expand my single self titanically and in the end go down with all the rest.

How can a people who do not mean to understand death hope to understand love, and who will sound the alarm?

We must laugh and cry, enjoy and suffer, in a word, vibrate to our full capacity … I think that’s what being really human means.

Loneliness doesn’t exist on any single plane of consciousness. It’s generally a low throb, barely audible, like the hum of a Mercedes engine in park, but every so often the demands of the highway call for a burst of acceleration, and the hum becomes a thunderous, elemental roar, and once again you’re reminded of what this baby’s carrying under the hood.

Two of an actress's greatest assets are love and pain. A great actress, even a good actress, must have plenty of both in her life.

And there you are on the shore, fitful and thoughtful, trying to attach them to an idea — some news of your own life. But the lilies are slippery and wild—they are devoid of meaning, they are simply doing, from the deepest spurs of their being, what they are impelled to do every summer. And so, dear sorrow, are you.

It takes tenacity and daring to travel the darkest interior of one's self.

Whoever has loved once, knows all that life contains of sorrow and of joy.

All the time we wondered and wondered, who is this person coming/growing/turning/floating/swimming deep, deep inside.

Suffering ignites the spark of contact with the sublime and offers proof of humanity.

So he tasted the deep pain that is reserved only for the strong, just as he had tasted for a little while the deep happiness.

The soul is the weariest part of the body.

May I strike my heart's keys clearly, and may none fail because of slack, uncertain, or fraying strings. May the tears that stream down my face make me more radiant: may my hidden weeping bloom.... How we waste our afflictions!... [T]hey're really our wintering foliage, our dark greens of meaning, one of the seasons of the clandestine year—; not only a season—: they're site, settlement, shelter, soil, abode.

Oh, all stories are the same, aren't they? Men and women fall in love or out of love. People are born; people die. It al ends happily or it all ends sadly, and the difference matters only to the people involved.

You learned that it was easy frighteningly easy to get lost in someone else's life accommodating him and stop being yourself. You learned to be wary about falling in love. And you learned that someone who loved you could stop loving you for some dark reason and even though that was bruising you were more resilient than you knew. Eventually you would get over it more or less.

Joy and pain, they are but two arteries of the one heart that pumps through all those who don't numb themselves to really living.

Through love, through friendship, a heart lives more than one life.

Love opens the doors into everything, as far as I can see, including and perhaps most of all, the door into one's own secret, and often terrible and frightening, real self.