There’s no condition one adjusts to so quickly as a state of war. by Alice Sebold

There’s no condition one adjusts to so quickly as a state of war.

Alice Sebold

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Murder had a blood red door on the other side of which was everyt... by Alice Sebold

Murder had a blood red door on the other side of which was everything unimaginable to everyone.

red doors blood

My grandmother stepped back into the kitchen to get their drinks. I had come to love her more after death than I ever had on Earth. I wish I could say that in that moment in the kitchen she decided to quit drinking, but I now saw that drinking was a part of what made her who she was. If the worst of what she left on Earth was a legacy of inebriated support, it was a good legacy in my book. ~Susie's grandmother, Lynn pgs 315-316

grandmother drinking book

I couldn't help but think, as I watched him, of the barrels of toxic fluids that had accrued behind Hal's bike shop where the scrub lining the railroad tracks had offered local companies enough cover to dump a stray contaner or two. Everything had been sealed up, but things were beginning to leak out. I had come to both pity and respect Len in the years since my mother left. He followed the physical to try to understand things that were impossible to comphrehend. In that, I could see, he was like me.

mother years thinking

Our only kiss was like an accident- a beautiful gasoline rainbow. by Alice Sebold

Our only kiss was like an accident- a beautiful gasoline rainbow.

rainbow kissing beautiful

"When the dead are done with the living, the living can go on to other things," Franny said. "What about the dead?" I asked. "Where do we go?"

bones done goes-on

Well, as my dad would say, it means she’s out of this shithole. by Alice Sebold

Well, as my dad would say, it means she’s out of this shithole.

my-dad dad mean

What did dead mean, Ray wondered. It meant lost, it meant frozen,... by Alice Sebold

What did dead mean, Ray wondered. It meant lost, it meant frozen, it meant gone.

lovely rays mean

Those who say they would rather fight to the death than be raped are fools. I would rather be raped a thousand times. You do what you have to.

fool fighting thousand

I forgive you," I said. I said what I had to. I would die by piec... by Alice Sebold

I forgive you," I said. I said what I had to. I would die by pieces to save myself from real death.

forgiving pieces real

I tried to take solace in Holiday, our dog. I missed him in a way I hadn't yet let myself miss my mother and father, my sister and brother. That way of missing would mean that I had accepted that I would never be with them again; it might sound silly but I didn't believe it, would not believe it.

brother dog mother

I watched my brother and my father. The truth was very different from what we learned in school. The truth was the line between the living and the dead could be, it seemed, murky and blurred.

brother father school

My father had not been outside the house except to drive back and forth to work or sit out in the backyard, for months, nor had he seen his neighbors. Now he looked at them, from face to face, until he realized I had been loved by people he didn't even recognize. His heart filled up, warm again as it had not been in what seemed so long to him- save small forgotten moments with Buckley, the accidents of love that happened with his son. ~pgs 209-210; Buckley, Lindsey and Jack on Susie

heart father son

But she was waiting patiently. She no longer believed in talk. It never rescued anything. At seventy she had come to believe in time alone. ~pg 254

alone-time waiting believe

I watched my beautiful sister running . . . and I knew she was not running away from me or toward me. Like someone who has survived a gut-shot, the wound had been closing, closing - braiding into a scar for eight long years.

eight running beautiful

Then a little voice in him said, Let go, let go, let go by Alice Sebold

Then a little voice in him said, Let go, let go, let go

voice letting-go littles

These things, she felt, were not to be passed around like disingenuous party favors. She kept an honor code with her journals and her poems. 'Inside, inside,' she would whisper quietly to herself when she felt the urge to tell.

favors party honor

Ruth hadn't talked to my sister since before my death, and then it was only to excuse herself in the hallway at school. But she'd seen Lindsey walking home with Samuel and seen her smile with him. She watched as my sister said yes to pancakes and no to everything else. She had tried to imagine herself being my sister as she had spent time imagining being me.

ruth home school

Before, they had never found themselves broken together. Usually, it was one needing the other but not both needing each other, and so there had been a way, by touching, to borrow from the stronger one's strength.

touching broken together

After telling the hard facts to anyone from lover to friend, I have changed in their eyes. Often it is awe or admiration, sometimes it is repulsion, once or twice it has been fury hurled directly at me for reasons I remain unsure of.

lovers eye facts

I was the girl he had chosen to kiss. He wanted, somehow to set me free. He didn't want to burn my photo or toss it away, but he didn't want to look at me anymore, either.

kissing girl looks