In situations of captivity the perpetrator becomes the most powerful person in the life of the victim, and the psychology of the victim is shaped by the actions and beliefs of the perpetrator.

After a traumatic experience, the human system of self-preservation seems to go onto permanent alert, as if the danger might return at any moment.

The conflict between the will to deny horrible events and the will to proclaim them aloud is the central dialectic of psychological trauma.

Over time as most people fail the survivor's exacting test of trustworthiness, she tends to withdraw from relationships. The isolation of the survivor thus persists even after she is free.

The study of psychological trauma has repeatedly led into realms of the unthinkable and foundered on fundamental questions of belief.

Dissociation appears to be... the internal mechanism by which terrorized people are silenced.

People who have survived atrocities often tell their stories in a highly emotional, contradictory and fragmented manner.

Love, when spelled backwards and read phonetically, reads evil

I wanted someone above me in the chain of life. I didn't want to be alone, a single blue egg in a crumbling nest.

In the best day.

I never sat down and said, 'I'm going to write historical fiction with strong romantic elements.' It was just the way the stories went.

No, it is not only our fate but our business to lose innocence, and once we have lost that, it is futile to attempt a picnic in Eden.

Outside of acting, the person that I admire the most is my mother.

A scientist should be the happiest of men.

We're going to turn this team around 360 degrees.

I don't like John Terry and I never have. He's got funny eyes and he's a cry baby. He's also a Cockney.

I've always just been attracted to comedy.