... in practice the standard for what constitutes rape is set not at the level of women's experience of violation but just above the level of coercion acceptable to men.

Recovery can only take place within the context of relationships; it cannot occur in isolation.

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 ordinary response to atrocities is to banish them from consciousness. Certain violations of the social compact are too terrible to utter aloud: this is the meaning of the word unspeakable.

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.

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.

Thus ended the first and adventurous part of his existence. What followed was so different that, but for the reality of sorrow which remained with him, this strange part must have resembled a dream.

I AM A GIRL WHO DARE, A CITIZEN WHO IS AWARE, DAUGHTER WHO PRAYER, SISTER WHO CARE, A FRIEND WHO SHARE, MIXTURE LIKE AIR, A DIAMOND SO RARE.

... I have read in your face, as plain as if it was a book, that but for some trouble and sorrow we should never know half the good there is about us.

I would get a lot of writing done if I lived in isolation in a cave under a swamp.

What is man's love? His vows are broke even while his parting kiss is warm.

Anybody who does not value what you have does not deserve your relationship.

Will you still need me, will you still feed me, when I'm sixty-four?

The foes from whom we pray to be delivered are our own passions, appetites, and follies; and against these there is always need that we should war.

If you ask a stupid question, you may feel stupid; if you don't ask a stupid question, you remain stupid.

Human thought by its nature is capable of giving, and does give, absolute truth, which is compounded of a sum-total of relative truths.