Malc

“I have nobody in the world. I'll kill myself. That's best. Everyone will say, It's for the best that she killed herself, she's better off dead . . . I hate myself so much I could spend hours and hours just screaming with hatred and with the pain of it, oh the pain of it . . .”
― Iris Murdoch, The Black Prince

“If you are told from the time you are one month that you're no good and you're not smart and you can't do it and you don't have an opinion of your own and you pick the wrong friends and you don't study the right way and you don't wear the right clothes and you don't look nice, at some point you're going to start believing it. And if you believe it, you're going to need a mommy to tell you what to do. And that's abuse. Not to let your child grow up to be an independent, respected human being.”
― Victoria Secunda, When You and Your Mother Can't Be Friends: Resolving the Most Complicated Relationship of Your Life

“If unloving mothers were able to see their behavious as abusive, they either would stop behaving that way or they would get help for their dysfunction. But many cannot: instead, they deny it, to themselves, their families, and the world at large, in order to avoid a sense of guilt, to avoid having to make changes in their lives, or to avoid the bruising awareness that they, too, were unloved children.”
― Victoria Secunda, When You and Your Mother Can't Be Friends: Resolving the Most Complicated Relationship of Your Life

“Another step is that daughters can learn to monitor their own feelings and instincts by saying, "I feel uncomfortable (angry, dominated, usurped, inadequate, guilty, furious) with my mother more often than I do not. I have to pay attention to that, because it shows in how I treat my friends (lover, spouse, kids, colleagues). There is validity here. I don't have to blame or excuse my mother-I just have to see her so I can see myself.”
― Victoria Secunda, When You and Your Mother Can't Be Friends: Resolving the Most Complicated Relationship of Your Life