“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
J.M. Northup
Born place: in The United States
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“The word troubled her, though. ‘Indispensable.’ It was a word people tended to resort to when dispensability was in the air.”
― Michel Faber, quote from Under the Skin
“Was he just humouring me? Just giving me the illusion of control while he manipulated me into doing what he wanted with his overwhelming proximity?”
― Ripley Patton, quote from Ghost Hand
“The principal and the most common problem at the beginning of any fairly conventional marriage is that regardless of the facilities for disengagement available to the contracting parties, you traditionally experience an unpleasant sense of having arrived and, therefore, of having reached and end, or rather, that the time has come to devote yourself to something else. I know that this feeling is both pernicious and erroneous and that giving in to it or accepting it is the reason why so many promising marriages collapse no sooner have they begun. I know that what you should do is to overcome that initial feeling and , far from devoting yourself to something else, you should devote yourself to the marriage itself, as if confronted by the most important structure and task of your life, even if you're tempted to believe that the task has already been completed and the structure built.”
― Javier Marías, quote from A Heart So White
“If this was what life was like without words - a life of doing, not just talking - I just might be willing to give them up forever.”
― James Patterson, quote from First Love
“Your work should be an act of love, not a marriage of convenience.”
― Haruki Murakami, quote from Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman
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The Slow Regard of S...BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.
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