Vanessa Springora > Quotes

“¿Por qué una adolescente de catorce años no podría amar a un hombre treinta años mayor que ella? Cien veces había dado vueltas mentalmente a esta pregunta. Sin darme cuenta de que estaba mal planteada, desde el principio. Lo que había que cuestionar no era mi atracción, sino la suya.”
― Vanessa Springora, Le Consentement

“No, ese hombre no albergaba los mejores sentimientos. Ese hombre no era bueno. Era lo que aprendemos a temer desde niños: un ogro.
Nuestro amor era un sueño tan potente que nada, ni una sola de las pocas advertencias de mi entorno, había bastado para despertarme. Era la pesadilla más perversa. Era una violencia innombrable.”
― Vanessa Springora, Le Consentement

“For many years I paced around my cage, my dreams filled with murder and revenge. Until the day when the solution finally presented itself to me, like something that was completely obvious: Why not ensnare the hunter in his own trap, ambush him within the pages of a book?”
― Vanessa Springora, Consent: A Memoir

“Who do you think you are, with all your questions? A modern version of the Inquisition? Have you become a feminist all of a sudden? That’s the last thing I need!”
― Vanessa Springora, Consent: A Memoir

“By setting his sights on young, lonely, vulnerable girls, whose parents either couldn’t cope or were actively negligent, G. knew that they would never threaten his reputation. And silence means consent.”
― Vanessa Springora, Consent: A Memoir

“Ce qui a changé aujourd’hui, et dont se plaignent, en fustigeant le puritanisme ambiant, des types comme lui et ses défenseurs, c’est qu’après la libération des mœurs, la parole des victimes, elle aussi, soit en train de se libérer.”
― Vanessa Springora, Le Consentement

“Si las relaciones sexuales entre un adulto y un menor de quince años son ilegales, ¿por qué esa tolerancia cuando son obra del representante de una élite, un fotógrafo, un escritor, un cineasta o un pintor?”
― Vanessa Springora, Le Consentement

“I would recall my mission in life - pleasuring men. That was my condition, my status. And so I would offer my services anew, with renewed zeal, and with a simulated conviction that I even managed to convince myself was real. I faked it. I faked enjoying sex, faked my pleasure, faked knowing what the point of it all was. Deep down, I was ashamed of being able to do it all so instinctively, when others had barely experienced their first kiss.”
― Vanessa Springora, Le Consentement

“subconsciente es sumamente astuto. No podemos escapar a su determinismo. Tras años alejada de ellos, los libros vuelven a ser mis amigos. Los convierto en mi trabajo. Al fin y al cabo, es lo que mejor conozco. Seguramente intento arreglar”
― Vanessa Springora, El consentimiento

“Pero con una dulzura inesperada me coge de la mano y me acaricia la mejilla. «¿Te das cuenta de hasta qué punto ese tío se aprovecha de ti y te hace daño? ¡La culpa no es tuya, es suya! Y tú no estás loca ni eres una prisionera. Basta con que recuperes la confianza en ti misma y lo dejes.»”
― Vanessa Springora, El consentimiento

“Nuestra sabiduría empieza donde termina la del autor. Nos gustaría que nos diera respuestas, cuando lo único que puede hacer es darnos deseos.”
― Vanessa Springora, El consentimiento

“porque el miedo al abandono es más fuerte que la razón y me he empeñado en creer que esta anormalidad me convertía en una persona interesante.”
― Vanessa Springora, El consentimiento

“With the power of the written word, he turned his "little V." into an unstable teenage girl eaten up with jealousy. He said whatever he wanted; I was just a character now, living on borrowed time, like every other girl who'd come before me. It wouldn't be long before he erased me completely from the pages of his wretched diary. For his readers, it was merely a story, words. For me, it was the beginning of a breakdown.”
― Vanessa Springora, Le Consentement

“Pourquoi une adolescente de quatorze ans ne pourrait-elle aimer un monsieur de trente-six ans son aîné? Cent fois, j'avais retourné cette question dans mon esprit. Sans voir qu'elle était mal posée, dès le départ. Ce n'est pas mon attirance à moi qu'il fallait interroger, mais la sienne”
― Vanessa Springora, Le Consentement

“Fathers are meant to be their daughters’ protectors. Mine is no more than a current of air.”
― Vanessa Springora, Consent: A Memoir

“Pero desde que G. ha empezado a escribir esta novela, lo real cambia de bando: poco a poco paso de musa a personaje de ficción.”
― Vanessa Springora, El consentimiento

“The role that G liked to give himself in his books was that of benefactor, responsible for the initiation of young people into the joys of sex... In reality, this exceptional talent was limited to not making his partner suffer. And where there is neither pain nor coercion there is no rape... Physical violence leaves a memory for a person to react against. It's appalling but tangible. Sexual abuse on the other hand is insidious and perverse, and the victim might be barely aware it is happening. Noone speaks of sexual abuse between adults. Of the abuse of the vulnerable, yes. Of an elderly person, for example. Vulnerability is precisely that infinitesimal space into which people with the psychological profile of G can insinuate themselves. It's the element that makes the element of consent so beside the point. Very often in the case of sexual abuse or abuse of the vulnerable, one comes across the same denial of reality, the same refusal to consider oneself a victim. And inded, how is it possible to acknowledge having been abused when it's impossible to deny having consented? Having felt desire for the very adult that was so eager to take advantage of you?”
― Vanessa Springora, Le Consentement

“Some children spend their days climbing trees. I spent mine in books. This was how I drowned the inconsolable sorrow in which my father's abandonment had left me. Romance and passion filled my imagination. I was far too young for the novels I read, and I understood little of them except that love makes you suffer. Why would anyone want to be destroyed so prematurely?”
― Vanessa Springora, Consent

“Every day I awoke to a new reality. A reality that I was still unable to accept in its entirety, for it risked tearing me apart.”
― Vanessa Springora, Le Consentement

“Yet they must have loved each other once. At the end of an interminable corridor, screened by a bedroom door, their sexuality is like a monster crouching just beyond my field of vision: omnipresent (my father's outbursts of jealousy are the daily evidence) but completely covert (I have no memory of the slightest embrace, the slightest kiss, the tiniest gesture of affection between my parents).”
― Vanessa Springora, Consent

“Υπάρχουν άνθρωποι που δεν θα καταλάβουν ποτέ το παραμικρό από την αγάπη.”
― Vanessa Springora, Le Consentement

“She was in such a bad way, she couldn't see that her single life was much of a burden for me as it was for her.
A father, conspicuous only by his absence, who left an unfathomable void in my life. A pronounced taste for reading. A certain sexual precocity. And, most of all, an enormous need to be seen.
All the necessary elements were now in place.”
― Vanessa Springora, Consent

“I was six years old. A studious little girl, bright and hardworking, obedient and well behaved, and vaguely melancholy, as is often the case with the children of divorced parents.”
― Vanessa Springora, Consent

“And G. manipulated language like others manipulate swords. With the simplest expression he could deal me a fatal blow that would destroy me. It was impossible to do battle with him on equal terms.”
― Vanessa Springora, Consent: A Memoir

“Le manque, le manque d’amour comme une soif qui boit tout, une soif de junkie qui ne regarde pas à la qualité du produit qu’on lui fournit et s’injecte sa dose létale avec la certitude de se faire du bien. Avec soulagement, reconnaissance et béatitude.”
― Vanessa Springora

“Stockholm syndrome is not just a theory. Why shouldn’t a fourteen-year-old girl be in love with a man thirty-six years her senior? I turned this question over in my mind a hundred times, without realizing it was the wrong one. It wasn’t my attraction to him that needed to be interrogated, but his to me.”
― Vanessa Springora, Consent: A Memoir

“But literature is all about lying, my dear young friend! Didn’t you realize?”
― Vanessa Springora, Consent: A Memoir

“Prologue
Les contes pour enfants sont source de sagesse. Sinon pour quelle raison traversaient-ils les époques ? Cendrillon s’efforcera de quitter le bal avant minuit ; Le Petit Chaperon rouge se méfiera du loup et de sa voix enjôleuse ; la Belle au bois dormant se gardera d’approcher son doigt de se fuseau a l’attrait irrésistible ; Blanche-Neige se tiendra éloignée des chasseurs et sous aucun prétexte ne mordra la pomme, si rouge, si appétissante, que le destin lui tend…
Autant d’avertissements que toute jeune personne ferait bien de suivre à la lettre.”
― Vanessa Springora, Le Consentement

“Je suis siderée par son refus de voir que cet amour portait en lui son propre échec, dès la première minute, qu'il n'y avait aucun avenir possible puisque G. ne pouvait aimer en moi qu'un moment fugace et transitoire: mon adolescence”
― Vanessa Springora, Le Consentement

“His eyes followed my every movement, and when I finally dared to turn toward him, he threw me a smile, which I confused for a paternal smile, because it was the smile of a man, and I no longer had a father.”
― Vanessa Springora, Consent