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.
Alice SeboldRead
Because horror on Earth is real and it is every day. It is like a flower or like the sun; it cannot be contained.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote suggests that the presence of horror in our lives is inevitable and omnipresent, similar to the beauty of nature.
Alice Sebold's quote reflects on the uncontainable nature of horror in the world, comparing it to a flower or the sun, which signifies that just as beauty is a constant and pervasive aspect of our reality, so too is horror. This duality of existence implies that one must acknowledge and confront the darker aspects of life, as they are an inherent part of the human experience.
Themes
HorrorLifeNatureTruthExistence
In practice
Example use cases
In a speech about societal issues, one might say, 'As Alice Sebold reminds us, horror on Earth is real and it is every day, urging us to remain vigilant.'
More from Alice Sebold
All quotes →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.
Alice SeboldRead
The stains could be seen only in the sunlight, so Ruth was never really aware of them until later, when she would stop at an outdoor cafe for a cup of coffee, and look down at her skirt and see the dark traces of spilled vodka or whiskey. The alcohol had the effect of making the black cloth blacker. This amused her; she had noted in her journal: 'booze affects material as it does people'.
Alice SeboldRead
Murderers are not monsters, they're men. And that's the most frightening thing about them.
Alice SeboldRead
As she stood in the darkened room and watched my sister and father, I knew one of things that heaven meant. I had a choice, and it was not to divide my family in my heart.
Alice SeboldRead
She liked to imagine that when she passed the world looked after her, but she also knew how anonymous she was.
Alice SeboldRead
Similar quotes
My films are expressive of a culture that has had the possibility of attaining material fulfillment while at the same time finding itself unable to accomplish the simple business of conducting human lives. We have been sold a bill of goods as a substitute for life. What is needed is reassurance in human emotions; a re-evaluation of our emotional capacities.
John CassavetesRead
What happens then is like what happens when we separate a jigsaw puzzle into its fuve hundred pieces: The over-all picture disappears. This is the state of modern medicine: It has lost the sense of the unity of man. Such is the price it has paid for its scientific progress. It has sacrificed art to science.
Paul TournierRead
I wish to go on living even after my death.
Anne FrankRead
When we adopt—and when we encourage a culture of adoption in our churches and communities—we’re picturing something that’s true about our God. We, like Jesus, see what our Father is doing and do likewise (John 5:19). And what our Father is doing, it turns out, is fighting for orphans, making them sons and daughters.
Russell D. MooreRead
Commerce, trade and exchange make other people more valuable alive than dead, and mean that people try to anticipate what the other guy needs and wants. It engages the mechanisms of reciprocal altruism, as the evolutionary biologists call it, as opposed to raw dominance.
Steven PinkerRead
Because God knows, searches and clearly understands the minds, hearts, thoughts, and nature of all, his supreme kindness and clemency do not permit anyone at all who is not guilty of deliberate sin to suffer eternal punishments.
Pope Pius IxRead