Jacque Newman

“Being a victim is supposed to set you free; it acquits you of any agency, any sense of responsibility to the person who did you harm. It's not your fault, they say. Leave him, they say. Nobody ever tells you what to do if leaving isn't an option.

They just call you stupid. A dumb bitch.

Sympathy is only meted out if you follow all of
society's rules for how a victim is supposed to behave.”
― Nenia Campbell, Cease and Desist

“i sometimes felt as if these marks on my body were a kind of code, which blossomed, then faded, like invisible ink held to a candle. But if they were a code, who held the key to it? I was sand, I was snow—written on, rewritten, smoothed over.”
― Margaret Atwood, The Blind Assassin

“Once you tell your first lie, the first time you lie for him, you are in it with him, and then you are lost.”
― Anita Shreve, Strange Fits of Passion

“Silence, too, can be torture.”
― Justina Chen Headley, North of Beautiful