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.

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.

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

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.

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.

I wish I could tell you the road from here to where you're going is straight and without obstacles. That is not the truth. The journey to greatness is just not that way.

It's the most amazing feeling to hold your child in your arms.

Schroeder, do you think love is the answer to everything?" "Boy, I hope not!

I've always known I was adopted.

How did I get to Hollywood? By train.

That which a person works hardest on, he winds up having. That's one of the fundamentals of this universe. That to which he devotes energy, he finally has.

My heart is a void, dead, and this makes me sad.

It is a fascinating and provocative thought that a body of water deserves to be considered as an organism in its own right.

I just want real creative freedom without worrying about, you know, car payments.

One cannot make men good by Act of Parliament.