1,745 Quotes About Abuse

I don't want you to have to handle it. That's the horror of my past. But you...you're the reality of my present. You're the proof I survived. The prize in the cereal box.

For time and eternity there have been fathers like Nathan who simply can see no way to have a daughter but to own her like a plot of land. To work her, plow her under, rain down a dreadful poison upon her. Miraculously, it causes these girls to grow. They elongate on the pale slender stalks of their longing, like sunflowers with heavy heads. You can shield them with your body and soul, trying to absorb that awful rain, but they'll still move toward him. Without cease they'll bend to his light.

when a wife wouldn't testify, little punishment was meted out. Alex came to understand that only those who pressed charges ever became truly free, because the life they were leading was a prison, even if most of them wouldn't admit it.

They don't like the thought of someone else making demands on the person whom they see as belonging entirely to them.

Who I am now is who I was before. The three years between, they were the aberration. You wouldn't recognize the person I became during that lost time. I barely do.

I wondered about her chicken-and-egg relationship with Dad. Which came first? Her helplessness or his controlling?

Maybe one is enough

...Incest is rape by extortion. Thus the child's very childhood becomes a weapon used to control her.

You have to teach 'em not to mess with you. You gotta be the big guy don't let him hurt you. If he hits you stand back up and beat the shit out of him.