One thing about failing repeatedly: If you're still doing it after you've failed that much, you really mean it.
Alice SeboldWe have this desire for everything to be explained to us. But if you go through your daily actions, very little ends up having a written-down explanation for why things happen, or why people do specific things. So it made sense to me to reflect the human condition that not every action has an explanation. We act, and then later maybe come to an understanding about it, or maybe not.
Alice SeboldThe earth has a mouth?โ Buckley asked. A big round mouth but with no lips,โ my father said. Jack,โ my mother said, laughing, โstop it. Do you know I caught him outside growling at the snapdragons?
Alice SeboldEveryday 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.
Alice SeboldShe was unaware that she was somewhat of a celebrity up in heaven. I had told people about her, what she did, how she observed moments of silence up and down the city and wrote small individual prayers in her journal, and the story had travelled so quickly that women lined up to know she had found where theyโd been killed. She had fans in heaven..... Meanwhile, for us, she was doing important work, work that most people on Earth were too frightened even too contemplate.
Alice Sebold