Alice Sebold was born on September 6th 1963 in Madison Wisconsin, and after moving to Philadelphia where her father taught Spanish at the University she would go on to attend Syracuse University where her life would change forever.
In the early hours of a May morning in 1981 Alice was dragged into a tunnel where she was beaten and brutally raped; after the attacker left her she reported it to police who were unable to find any leads despite investigations. In a twist of fate Alice spotted her attacker, notified the police and testified against him in court, he was convicted and sentenced to 8-25 years.
Alice was determined to not let the attack change her plans or curtail her life and she used her experiences in her writing with her first book Lucky being what she termed ‘a misery memoir’ with the title being taken from a comment by a police officer who said that Alice was lucky as a previous victim had been found dead in the very same tunnel she’d been attacked in. With two further books published The Lovely Bones, and The Almost Moon following on from Lucky and establishing Alice as a writer of renown, here are 8 Alice Sebold Quotes of Survival.
Sometimes the dreams that come true are the dreams you never even knew you had.
You save yourself or you remain unsaved.
Murderers are not monsters, they’re men. And that’s the most frightening thing about them.
You’re not supposed to look back, you’re supposed to keep going.
I would like to tell you that I am, and you will one day be, forever safe.
I have always felt extremely weird. But I am very happy with my weirdnesses, and I want other people to be very happy with theirs.
Your sordid life is your sordid life. You shouldn’t live it if you don’t like it.
I live in a world where two truths coexist: where both hell and hope lie in the palm of my hand.
If those quotes have piqued your interest and you fancy some gritty reading with no holds barred then why not have a look through Alice Sebold’s Bibliographies as linked below.
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