Within their lives, they had felt powerless against a parade of horrible events, and in order for them to restore a sense of balance (at least in their minds), they used the murders of other people like many people use a cigarette . . . They crave it because it calms them down, for within it, though they know it is bad for them, it serves as an immediate source of pleasure. And to the female multiple murderer, controlling another human being to death serves the same purpose. They are seeking a calm in their lives that they will never have, and deep down, they truly know it will never "fix" their lives. —Deborah Schurmann-Kauflin
A lot was exactly how much it hurt, or maybe more than a lot. When it was done, the question he had to ask himself as he lay there shivering was what, if anything, was there left of him worth saving?
As far as that question goes, he, or what now stands in for him, still doesn't know the answer. —Brian Evenson, "Three Indignities"
Her suffering was her armour. Gradually it became her skin. Then she could not take it off. —Jeanette Winterson, Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?
Many abused children cling to the hope that growing up will bring escape and freedom. But the personality formed in an environment of coercive control is not well adapted to adult life. The survivor is left with fundamental problems in basic trust, autonomy, and initiative. She approaches the tasks of early adulthood—establishing independence and intimacy—burdened by major impairments in self-care, in cognition and memory, in identity, and in the capacity to form stable relationships. She is still a prisoner of her childhood; attempting to create a new life, she reencounters the trauma. —Judith Herman
No one can tell what goes on in between the person you were and the person you become. No one can chart that blue and lonely section of hell. There are no maps of the change. You just come out the other side.
They will make pigs of you all, and they will bury their snouts into your ribs, and they will eat your hearts! —The Machine, Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs
I am really doing it, she thought, turning the wheel to send the car directly at the great tree at the curve of the driveway, I am really doing it, I am doing this all by myself, now, at last; this is me, I am really really really doing it by myself.
In the unending, crashing second before the car hurled into the tree she thought clearly, Why am I doing this? Why am I doing this? Why don't they stop me? —Shirley Jackson, The Haunting of Hill House
I have love in me the likes of which you can scarcely imagine and rage the likes of which you would not believe. If I cannot satisfy the one, I will indulge the other. —Mary Shelley, Frankenstein (the Creature)
How often in my life have I been abandoned? she thought, and could not help but think that abandonment was a word jotted not just on one or two moments of her existence, but scrawled heavily across her life as a whole. —Brian Evenson, "Scour"
If someone told you that engineering was a field where you could get away with not dealing with people or feelings, then I’m very sorry to tell you that you have been lied to. —Yonatan Zunger
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QUOTES
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—Deborah Schurmann-Kauflin
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—Jonathan Lethem
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—Charles Fort
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As far as that question goes, he, or what now stands in for him, still doesn't know the answer.
—Brian Evenson, "Three Indignities"
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—Sylvia Plath
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—Jeanette Winterson, Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?
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—Brandon Speck
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—Al Capone
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—Chuck Palahniuk, Haunted
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—Judith Herman
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—Jaqun Wilson
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—Philip K. Dick
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Or you don't.
—Stephen King, The Stand
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—Shirley Jackson, We Have Always Lived in the Castle
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—The Machine, Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs
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In the unending, crashing second before the car hurled into the tree she thought clearly, Why am I doing this? Why am I doing this? Why don't they stop me?
—Shirley Jackson, The Haunting of Hill House
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—Neon Genesis Evangelion: The End of Evangelion
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That danger shall seem sport, and I will go.
—William Shakespeare, Twelfth Night (Antonio)
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Only one person who was her family.
Only one person who loved her.
Only one person she loved.
She couldn't let him be stolen. She couldn't give him to anybody.
—Ryogo Narita, Baccano! (1931 The Grand Punk Railroad: Express)
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—Mary Shelley, Frankenstein (the Creature)
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—Brian Evenson, "Scour"
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—Yonatan Zunger
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—Gillian Flynn