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.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes the importance of keeping personal thoughts and creations private, rather than treating them casually.
Alice Sebold's quote expresses a deep appreciation for the sanctity of personal expression found in journals and poetry. It highlights the idea that genuine feelings and thoughts should be kept safe and not shared as if they were trivial, suggesting that true vulnerability and intimacy come from honoring our private worlds instead of broadcasting them carelessly.
In practice
In a writing workshop, to emphasize the importance of personal reflection before sharing work.
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.
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'.
Murderers are not monsters, they're men. And that's the most frightening thing about them.
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.
She liked to imagine that when she passed the world looked after her, but she also knew how anonymous she was.
There was one thing my murderer didn't understand; he didn't understand how much a father could love his child.
Man never had an idea - man will never have an idea, except those supplied to him by his surroundings. Every idea in the world that man has came to him by nature.
My characters aren't losers. They're rebels. They win by their refusal to play by everyone else's rules.
Magick is the science and art of causing change to occur in conformity with will.
Then others for breath of words respect, Me for my dumb thoughts, speaking in effect.
Maybe the more emotions a person experiences in their daily lives, the longer time seems to feel to them. As you get older, you experience fewer new things, and so time seems to go by faster.
When you understand, that what you're telling is just a story. It isn't happening anymore. When you realize the story you're telling is just words, when you can just crumble up and throw your past in the trashcan, then we'll figure out who you're going to be.
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