Tiegan

“As soon as we started complaining, no matter how justifiably, we caught ourselves, chastised ourselves for being so negative and spoiled and ungrateful, and turned it into a blessing - an opportunity for learning and growth.”
― Bethany Joy Lenz, Dinner for Vampires: Life on a Cult TV Show

“Intelligent and ambitious people want to be challenged, and someone having high expectations of you is a turn-on. High demand is a motivator, success is a drug, and before you know it, you're rationalizing anything in order to meet the demand and get your high. The demand has become your god.
There <\i>is one indisputable way to identify a cult, one characteristic they all share. It is not a belief in alien spacecraft or a plentiful supply of Flavor Aid. It is the notion that anyone who does not agree with the group's beliefs or choices, who expresses concerns, who simply dares to ask questions, is deemed "unsafe." Every good thing about that person must be subsumed by the fact that they disagree with me, so I can boil down their character into something vilifiable. For mind control to work, there has to be heroes and villains. It has to be us versus them. In a cult, it isn't good enough for you to say "I love you, but I disagree with you." You must affirm my choices and beliefs. Only then can you be considered "safe." In a cult, safety means agreement.
The irony, of course, is that while you are not allowed to have your own opinion about my beliefs, I am allowed to have an opinion about yours.”
― Bethany Joy Lenz, Dinner for Vampires: Life on a Cult TV Show

“...something ingrained in me from years of being in these charismatic environments was that Christians were supposed to have the ultimate answers, so we shouldn't take advice from nonbelievers.”
― Bethany Joy Lenz, Dinner for Vampires: Life on a Cult TV Show

“Ashleigh, the librarian responsible for our adult patrons and programming, slips out from the back office, her gigantic quilted purse slung over one shoulder and her raven topknot jutting slightly to the right.
Despite being a five-foot-tall hourglass of a woman with Disney Princess eyes, Ashleigh is the embodiment of the scary-library stereotype. Her voice has the force of a blunt object, and she once told me she "doesn't mind confrontation" in a tone that made me wonder if maybe we were already in one. She's the person that our septuagenarian branch manager, Harvey, deploys whenever a difficult patron needs a firm hand.
My first shift working alongside her, a middle-aged guy with a wad of dip in his cheek walked up, stared at her boobs, and said, "I've always had a thing for exotic girls."
Without even looking up from her computer, Ashleigh replied, "That's inappropriate, and if you speak to me like that again, we'll have to ban you. Would it be helpful if I printed you some literature about sexual harassment?”
― Emily Henry, Funny Story