“I felt ancient and exhausted. I felt like a prisoner within myself and as if I was just watching a movie that was playing before my eyes. I just wanted all of it to end and disappear; I wanted to disappear.”
― J.M. Northup, quote from A Prisoner Within
“I was surprised hearing my own ragged voice. I sounded so hateful and angry. My voice didn’t resemble any part of what I knew of myself.”
― J.M. Northup, quote from A Prisoner Within
“I wouldn’t let the old voices dictate me; I wouldn’t let anyone dictate who I was anymore. I was strong enough to know who I was and I wasn’t going to be beaten down again.”
― J.M. Northup, quote from A Prisoner Within
“Perhaps I really was disillusioned; unable to see myself for who, and what, I really was. Maybe I really was an ungrateful wretch who just refused to take responsibility for my own actions. Maybe I was lying to myself because I didn’t want to admit to being a bad person. Maybe…”
― J.M. Northup, quote from A Prisoner Within
“My step-dad’s rendition of events was uncontested even by me and therefore, it became our truth. Truth I’d never be able to prove or change; truth that protected him from suspicion and penalty. Truth that I now knew was a lie.”
― J.M. Northup, quote from A Prisoner Within
“There was that part of me that thought if I was already been accused of it and punished for it, then I should just do it. Of course, I didn’t want to be that person. Did I?”
― J.M. Northup, quote from A Prisoner Within
“Sitting there, I wasn’t convinced I’d survive until that day let alone beyond it. I felt the struggle intensifying between my mom and me no matter what I did to try to stop it. I couldn’t imagine a future where she’d just let me walk away from her. As it was, I felt like she was breaking me down a little more each day.”
― J.M. Northup, quote from A Prisoner Within
“As I lay in the late hours of night or perhaps the wee hours of morning, I felt content. I’d been right to keep faith and trust when I had no reason to. I didn’t expect any grand gestures or magical solutions to things, but my hope was fueled.”
― J.M. Northup, quote from A Prisoner Within
“She’s erasing me bit by bit and it’s painfully obvious that no one can stop her.”
― J.M. Northup, quote from A Prisoner Within
“Why did I even try then? Of course, in asking the question, I’d already known the answer; faith. I hoped; I couldn’t help it.”
― J.M. Northup, quote from A Prisoner Within
“The question is, shall it or shall it not be linear history. I've always thought a kaleidoscopic view might be an interesting heresey. Shake the tube and see what comes out. Chronology irritates me. There is no chronology inside my head. I am composed of myriad Claudias who spin and mix and part like sparks of sunlight on water. The pack of cards I carry around is forever shuffled and re-shuffled; there is no sequence, everything happens at once. The machines of the new technology, I understand, perform in much the same way: all knowledge is stored, to be summoned up at the flick of a key. They sound, in theory, more efficient. Some of my keys don't work; others demand pass-words, codes, random unlocking sequences. The collective past, curiously, provides these. It is public property, but it is also deeply private. We all look differently at it. My Victorians are not your Victorians. My seventeenth century is not yours. The voice of John Aubrey, of Darwin, of whoever you like, speaks in one tone to me, in another to you.”
― Penelope Lively, quote from Moon Tiger
“Huddled in her mink in the Kansas City airport, she had a vision of women writing about sex as openly as male writers, but quite, quite differently. Some women would treat sex much as men did,as conquest, as adventure--in a way as McCarthy had. Other women would treat female sexuality far less romantically then men who did not consider themselves romantics, like Hemingway, were wont to. The earth would not move, no, there would be more biology and less theatrics. Women had less ego involvement in sex than men did, but far more at stake economically.”
― Marge Piercy, quote from Gone to Soldiers
“Olía a yerbas y tenía la piel fría. Supo que amarla era su destino inexorable.”
― Isabel Allende, quote from Of Love and Shadows
“Herger said to me, "Be thankful, for you are fortunate."
I inquired the source of my fortune. Herger said in reply, "If you have the fear of high places, than this day you shall overcome it; and so you shall have faced a great challenge; and so you shall be adjudged a hero.”
― Michael Crichton, quote from Eaters of the Dead
“Wait, wait, wait.” V waved his hand-rolled around. “I’m the son of a deity and she picked you?”
― J.R. Ward, quote from The King
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