276 Quotes by Alice Sebold

Murderers are not monsters, they’re men. And that’s the most frightening thing about them.

To transform experience and thought into language and narrative – that is beautiful even if that beauty is in brokenness.

I was here for a moment, and then I was gone. I wish you all a long and happy life.

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

You’re not supposed to look back, you’re supposed to keep going.

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.

It’s very weird to succeed at thirty-nine years old and realize that in the midst of your failure, you were slowly building the life that you wanted anyway.

Poison and medicine are often the same thing, given in different proportions.

I explained myself like this: I did not feel adamant about saying no, but I also didn’t feel adamant about saying yes, so until I felt strongly one way or another, I’d stick with no.