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115c731
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In the tunnel where I was raped, a tunnel that was once an underground entry to an amphitheater, a place where actors burst forth from underneath the seats of a crowd, a girl had been murdered and dismembered. I was told this story by the police. In comparison, they said, I was lucky.
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rape
emotional-abuse
sexual-abuse
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Alice Sebold |
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99fc2c3
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She was in the downstairs bathroom sneaking bites from the macaroons my father's firm always sent us for Christmas. She ate them greedily they were like suns bursting open in her mouth.
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Alice Sebold |
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03a5fd4
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When Lindsey and I played Barbies Barbie and Ken got married at sixteen. To us there was only one true love in everyone's life we have no concept of compromise or retries.
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Alice Sebold |
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b442c4a
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When the dead are done with the living, the living can go on to other things.
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Alice Sebold |
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55a7701
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You're dead and you have to accept it.
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Alice Sebold |
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8dd18c4
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I was not in the bathroom, in the tub, or in the spigot; I did not hold court in the mirror above her head or stand in miniature at the tip of every bristle on Lindsey's or Buckley's toothbrush. In some way I could not account for- had they reached a state of bliss? were my parents back together forever? had Buckley begun to tell someone his troubles? would my father's heart truly heal?- I was done yearning for them, needing them to yearn f..
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Alice Sebold |
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50eb83d
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I realized how subversive Ruth was then, not because she drew pictures of nude women that got misused by her peers, but because she was more talented than her teachers. She was the quietest kind of rebel. Helpless, really.
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rebellion
rebel
drawing
teachers
talent
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Alice Sebold |
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3d43e6a
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I was unable to recognize something that I would come up against time and time again. You could not be filled with hate and be beautiful. Like any girl, I wanted to be beautiful. But I was filled with hate. So how could I be both..?
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Alice Sebold |
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5201df2
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As he wrote, the candle in the window kept flickering, and despite his desk lamp the flickering distracted him. He sat back in the old wooden school chair he'd had since college and heard the reassuring squeak of the wood under him. At the firm he was failing to even register what was needed of him. Daily now he faced column after of column of meaningless numbers he was supposed to make square with company claims. He was making mistakes wit..
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Alice Sebold |
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d0eca82
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The living room seemed to be where no living ever actually occurred.
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Alice Sebold |
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2a4a405
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Every time I told my story, I lost a bit, the smallest drop of pain.
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Alice Sebold |
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9b8c514
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I had wondered if all mothers shared a fear of how vibrant and alive their children were.
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Alice Sebold |
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2eb144c
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To take the tops off all the houses and mingle our miseries was too simple a solution, I knew. Houses had windows with shades. Yards had gates and fences. There were carefully planned out sidewalks and roads, and these were the paths that, if you chose to go into someone else's reality, you had to be willing to walk. There were no shortcuts.
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Alice Sebold |
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3203780
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Do you know how alone I've always felt?
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Alice Sebold |
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0586a22
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My father was too distracted to see anything in this. Mimicking my mother, he taped it to the fridge in the same place Buckley's long-forgotten drawing of the Inbetween had been. But my brother knew something was wrong with his story. Knew it by how his teacher reacted, doing a double take like they did in his comic books. He took the story down and brought it to my old room while Grandma Lynn was downstairs. He folded it into a tiny square..
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Alice Sebold |
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61c2228
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On my way home from the junior high, I would sometimes stop at the edge of our property and watch my mother ride the ride-on mower, looping in and out among the pine trees, and I could remember then how she used to whistle in the mornings as she made her tea and how my father, rushing home on Thursdays, would bring her marigolds and her face would light up in yellowy in delight. They had been deeply, separately, wholly in love- apart from h..
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Alice Sebold |
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01df013
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For Lorenz, virgins were not a part of his world. He was skeptical of many things I said. Later, when the serology reports proved that what I had said was not a lie, that I had been a virgin, and that I was telling the truth, he could not respect me enough. I think he felt responsible, somehow. It was, after all, in his world where this hideous thing had happened to me. A world of violent crime.
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Alice Sebold |
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ddc7193
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You save yourself or you remain unsaved
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Alice Sebold |
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611c36b
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She was armed to the teeth for any onslaught of sympathy.
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Alice Sebold |
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51d550b
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You can be free. Simply put, you have to give up on Earth.
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Alice Sebold |
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a872eed
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Her brain was a storm, her usual insight gone.
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Alice Sebold |
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338388f
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They would go back to their homes and put me to rest, a letter from the past never reopened or reread.
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Alice Sebold |
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8b6ed73
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Ruth had been a girl haunted and now she would be a woman haunted. First by accident and now by choice. All of it, the story of my life and death, was hers if she chose to tell it, even to one person at a time.
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Alice Sebold |