Alice Sebold Quotes

We feel guilty for what we do. We feel shame for what we are.

Do you absolutely despise me, Walter?" "No." He hesitated and his voice was strange. "I despise myself.

I mean, I felt terrible. And in the beginning, I mean, I was completely devastated. I mean, can you imagine the kind of guilt that you would feel, and the responsibility?

Society isn't good at dealing with people who have something concrete to feel guilty about or who are dealing with a loss.

When my young men began the killing, my heart was hurt.

One might expect that the families of murder victims would be showered with sympathy and support, embraced by their communities. But in reality they are far more likely to feel isolated, fearful, and ashamed, overwhelmed by grief and guilt, angry at the criminal-justice system, and shunned by their old friends.

There's so much guilt there attached to having a perfectly good life.

I loved and protected my own children like a fierce mama bear, but one of them died anyway. It was a dark day when I realized that part of my responsibility in Casey's death was that I did not love all the children of the world in that same real, not abstract, way.

Most of me was glad when my mother died. She was a handful, but not in a cute, festive way. More in a life-threatening way, that had caused me a long time ago to give up all hope of ever feeling good about having had her as a mother.

I hate the past - especially my own past.

Nobody feels any worse than I do about losing.

You know the passage where Scarlett voices her happiness that her mother is dead, so that she can't see what a bad girl Scarlett has become? Well, that's me.

The darkest moments for me weren't necessarily winding up in the hospital or anything like that. It was those quiet moments alone when I just hated the person I had become.

I was tormented with guilt for years and years. In fact, it was so bad that if I didn't feel wrong, I didn't feel right!

It was a sad process for me to become a mom, and a long process. I felt so embarrassed that I couldn't have a biological child.

I prayed often for deliverance from the pain caused by my decision to abort my baby. I suffered the threat of cervical and breast cancer and experienced the pain of empty arms after the baby was gone. And truly, for me, and countless abortive mothers, nothing on earth can fully restore what has been lost; only Jesus can.

It took me a year to talk about my miscarriage.

The belief when your mother gives you away is that there's something deeply wrong. Mothers don't give babies away. There's something wrong with me, something unlovable, something seriously flawed in me. It's a fundamental thing; it's precognitive. You feel it rather than think it. How could you not?

I live in a puddle of guilt, an ocean of guilt that you want your own time.

Most people don't go around talking about their miscarriages. It's not really something you shout about. What's more, people often feel embarrassed or even guilty about them.

Sometimes I feel like I've forgotten how to be the mom after the death of my son.

Shame isn't a strong enough word for what I feel. "You could live a hundred lifetimes and not deserve him, you know," Haymitch says.

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.

I know very well that I have no reason to feel aggrieved - I am fully aware of how lucky I am, but knowing it and still being down makes me hate myself all the more.

Conscience, the executioner, shaking her secret scourge.