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“You're never ready for what you have to do. You just do it. That makes you ready.”
― quote from Sybil: The Classic True Story of a Woman Possessed by Sixteen Personalities
“Isolated, she managed somehow to feel free—albeit with a freedom that made her want to smash a hole in the very center of the universe.”
― quote from Sybil: The Classic True Story of a Woman Possessed by Sixteen Personalities
“There is no past. Past is present when you carry it with you.”
― quote from Sybil: The Classic True Story of a Woman Possessed by Sixteen Personalities
“I want somebody to love, and I want somebody to love me. And nobody ever will. And that's why it hurts. Because it makes a difference. And when nobody cares, it makes you all mad inside and it makes you want to say things, tear up things, break things, get through the glass.”
― quote from Sybil: The Classic True Story of a Woman Possessed by Sixteen Personalities
“I’m not fit to occupy space. Excuse me for living.”
― quote from Sybil: The Classic True Story of a Woman Possessed by Sixteen Personalities
“I have to force myself even to move my eyeballs. It's so easy just to stare.”
― quote from Sybil: The Classic True Story of a Woman Possessed by Sixteen Personalities
“Theirs was the eternal youth of an alternating self, a youth with the constant although unfulfilled promise of growing up”
― quote from Sybil: The Classic True Story of a Woman Possessed by Sixteen Personalities
“The anger. The terror. The feeling of entrapment. the profound distrust of people.The wistful, plaintive conviction that a window, a thing, was more important than she. These feelings and attitudes, expressed in the course of this hour, were symptoms of some profound disturbance.”
― quote from Sybil: The Classic True Story of a Woman Possessed by Sixteen Personalities
“The neurologist had dismissed her case after a single visit, handing out an easy nostrum by telling her father that if she continued to write poetry, she would be all right.”
― quote from Sybil: The Classic True Story of a Woman Possessed by Sixteen Personalities
“Vicky became more serious and her tone more reflective as she remarked, "Life has so much pain that one needs a catharsis. I don't mean escape. You don't escape in books. On the contrary, they help you to realize yourself more fully. Mon Dieu, I'm glad I have them. When I find myself in a situation in which I'd rather not be - because of the perculiar circumstances of my life - I have this outlet. You may think me tres superieure but I'm not really, I am just what I am and live the way I like.”
― quote from Sybil: The Classic True Story of a Woman Possessed by Sixteen Personalities
“She'd abandoned the animal she loved as she herself had been abandoned repeatedly in the past by people who had claimed to love her.”
― quote from Sybil: The Classic True Story of a Woman Possessed by Sixteen Personalities
“It all made sense — terrible sense. The panic she had experienced in the warehouse district because of not knowing what had happened had been superseded at the newsstand by the even greater panic of partial knowledge. And now the torment of partly knowing had yielded to the infinitely greater terror of knowing precisely”
― quote from Sybil: The Classic True Story of a Woman Possessed by Sixteen Personalities
“I realized how trapped I was by all the talk of the end of the world.”
― quote from Sybil: The Classic True Story of a Woman Possessed by Sixteen Personalities
“God fearing and man hating. Sugar sugar. There was so much sugar in the way they pretended to treat each other that I suffered from diabetes of the soul.”
― quote from Sybil: The Classic True Story of a Woman Possessed by Sixteen Personalities
“Willard married his father in female form.”
― quote from Sybil: The Classic True Story of a Woman Possessed by Sixteen Personalities
“You knock yourself down. You don't think much of yourself. That's an uncomfortable feeling. So you project it on others and say, 'They don't like me.”
― quote from Sybil: The Classic True Story of a Woman Possessed by Sixteen Personalities
“After writing the letter Sybil lost almost two days. "Coming to," she stumbled across what she had written just before she had dissociated and wrote to Dr. Wilbur as follows: It's just so hard to have to feel, believe, and admit that I do not have conscious control over my selves. It is so much more threatening to have something out of hand than to believe that at any moment I can stop (I started to say "This foolishness") any time I need to. When I wrote the previous letter, I had made up my mind I would show you how I could be very composed and cool and not need to ask you to listen to me nor to explain anything to me nor need any help. By telling you that all this about the multiple personalities was not really true I could show, or so I thought, that I did not need you. Well, it would be easier if it were put on. But the only ruse of which I'm guilty is to have pretended for so long before coming to you that nothing was wrong. Pretending that the personalities did not exist has now caused me to lose about two days.”
― quote from Sybil: The Classic True Story of a Woman Possessed by Sixteen Personalities
“It is so much more threatening to have something out of hand than to believe that at any moment I can stop (I started to say "This foolishness") any time I need to.”
― quote from Sybil: The Classic True Story of a Woman Possessed by Sixteen Personalities
“It is so much more threatening to have something out of hand than to believe that at any moment I can stop (I started to say "This foolishness") any time I need to. When I wrote the previous letter, I had made up my mind I would show you how I could be very composed and cool and not need to ask you to listen to me nor to explain anything to me nor need any help. By telling you that all this about the multiple personalities was not really true but just put on, I could show, or so I thought, that I did not need you. Well, it would have been easier if it were put on. But the only ruse of which I'm guilty is to have pretended for so long before coming to you that nothing was wrong. Pretending that the personalities did not exist has now caused me to lose about two days.
Three weeks later Sybil reaffirmed her belief in the existence of her other selves in a letter to Miss Updyke, the school nurse of undergraduate days.”
― quote from Sybil: The Classic True Story of a Woman Possessed by Sixteen Personalities
“When I wrote the previous letter, I had made up my mind I would show you how I could be very composed and cool and not need to ask you to listen to me nor to explain anything to me nor need any help. By telling you that all this about the multiple personalities was not really true but just put on, I could show, or so I thought, that I did not need you. Well, it would have been easier if it were put on.”
― quote from Sybil: The Classic True Story of a Woman Possessed by Sixteen Personalities
“Well, it would have been easier if it were put on. But the only ruse of which I'm guilty is to have pretended for so long before coming to you that nothing was wrong. Pretending that the personalities did not exist has now caused me to lose about two days.”
― quote from Sybil: The Classic True Story of a Woman Possessed by Sixteen Personalities
“Then the one called Raltariki is really a demon?" asked Tak.
"Yes—and no," said Yama, "If by 'demon' you mean a malefic, supernatural creature, possessed of great powers, life span and the ability to temporarily assume virtually any shape—then the answer is no. This is the generally accepted definition, but it is untrue in one respect."
"Oh? And what may that be?"
"It is not a supernatural creature."
"But it is all those other things?"
"Yes."
"Then I fail to see what difference it makes whether it be supernatural or not—so long as it is malefic, possesses great powers and life span and has the ability to change its shape at will."
"Ah, but it makes a great deal of difference, you see. It is the difference between the unknown and the unknowable, between science and fantasy—it is a matter of essence. The four points of the compass be logic, knowledge, wisdom and the unknown. Some do bow in that final direction. Others advance upon it. To bow before the one is to lose sight of the three. I may submit to the unknown, but never to the unknowable.”
― Roger Zelazny, quote from Lord of Light
“After all, when you seek advice from someone it's certainly not because you want them to give it. You just want them to be there while you talk to yourself.”
― Terry Pratchett, quote from Jingo
“Dig a little, he continues. Search. Examine. Sculpt from the inside out, and not the other way around. Don’t be afraid to screw up along the way.”
― Laurie Faria Stolarz, quote from Deadly Little Secret
“You can’t understand command till you’ve had it. It’s the loneliest, most oppressive job in the whole world. It’s a nightmare, unless you’re an ox. You’re forever teetering along a tiny path of correct decisions and good luck that meanders through an infinite gloom of possible mistakes.”
― Herman Wouk, quote from The Caine Mutiny
“Oh, it’s a terrible, cruel thing—first you’re young, and that takes up such a long time you think it’s forever, then suddenly you’re not young, and you never get used to it—and, oh dear, there’s just the one way out.”
― Joyce Carol Oates, quote from We Were the Mulvaneys
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