Victim Quotes - Page 17

• The human mind appears suddenly and inexplicably out of some unknown and unimaginable void. It passes half its known life in the mental chaos of sleep. Even when awake it is a victim of its own ill-adjustment, of disease, of age, of external suggestion, of nature's compulsions; it doubts its own sensations and trusts only in instruments and averages.

  Christopher Morley

  Sleep, Average, Doubt

  Christopher Morley (2013). “The Haunted Bookshop”, p.129, Melville House

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Just each of us being me, me, me first. The murderer, the victim, the witness each of us thinks our role is the lead. Probably that goes for anybody in the world.

  Chuck Palahniuk

  Thinking, Roles, World

  "Invisible Monsters". Book by Chuck Palahniuk, September 17, 1999.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Latent in every man is a venom of amazing bitterness, a black resentment; something that curses and loathes life, a feeling of being trapped, of having trusted and been fooled, of being helpless prey to impotent rage, blind surrender, the victim of a savage, ruthless power that gives and takes away, enlists a man, drops him, promises and betrays, and -crowning injury- inflicts on him the humiliation of feeling sorry for himself.

  Paul Valery

  Sorry, Men, Giving

  18 Copy quote

• i am like a survivor of the flood walking through the streets drenched with God surprised that all of the drowned victims are still walking and talking

  Saul Williams

  Talking, Survivor, Flood

  Saul Williams (2009). “, said the shotgun to the head.”, p.25, Simon and Schuster

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• We choose--or choose not--to be alone when we decide whom we will accept as our fellows, and whom we will reject. Thus an eremite in a mountain is in company, because the birds and coneys, the initiates whose words live in his 'forest books,' and the winds--the messengers of the Increate--are his companions. Another man, living in the midst of millions, may be alone, because there are none but enemies and victims around him.

  Gene Wolfe

  Book, Men, Wind

  5 Copy quote

• How many of us will be saved the pain of seeing the most important things in our lives disappearing from one moment to the next? I don't just mean people, but our ideas and dreams too: we might survive a day, a week, a few years, but we're all condemned to lose. Our body remains alive, yet sooner or later our soul will receive the mortal blow. The perfect crime - for we don't know who murdered our joy, what their motives were, or where the guilty parties are to be found...they too are the victims of the reality they created.

  Paulo Coelho

  Dream, Pain, Party

  5 Copy quote

• When someone is mean to me, I just make them a victim in my next book.

  Mary Higgins Clark

  Book, Mean, Next

  24 Copy quote

• Facts mean little compared to attitudes. To contradict rumor or sentiment is as futile as arguing against a believer's faith in the Immaculate Conception. You have simply become a victim of faith, Comrade Assistant.

  Milan Kundera

  Attitude, Mean, Rumor

  Milan Kundera (1974). “Laughable Loves”

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• It is thus, if there is any rule, that we ought to die--neither as victim nor as fanatic, but as the seafarer who can greet with an equal eye the deep that he is entering, and the shore that he must leave.

  E. M. Forster

  Eye, Entering, Equal

  E. M. Forster (2013). “Delphi Collected Works of E. M. Forster (Illustrated)”, p.603, Delphi Classics

  10 Copy quote

  Show source

• In the long run, the oppressor is also a victim. In the short run (and so far, human history has consisted only of short runs), the victims, themselves desperate and tainted with the culture that oppresses them, turn on other victims.

  Howard Zinn

  Running, Long, Culture

  Howard Zinn (2015). “A People's History of the United States: 1492-Present”, p.10, Routledge

  13 Copy quote

  Show source

• In literary criticism the critic has no choice but to make over the victim of his attention into something the size and shape of himself.

  John Steinbeck

  Choices, Criticism, Attention

  John Steinbeck (1980). “Travels with Charley in Search of America”, p.47, Penguin

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• For a moment she turned in a circle, staring at her hands, which she held high and useless, close to her breast. She bobbed and shambled like an ape doing a trick, and her face was the silly, bewildered face of a joker's victim. And yet she could make no move that was not beautiful. Her trapped terror was more lovely than any joy that Molly had ever seen, and that was the most terrible thing about it.

  Peter S. Beagle

  Beautiful, Silly, Moving

  Peter S. Beagle (2003). “A fine and private place: The last unicorn”

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• I'm inclined to reserve all judgments, a habit that has opened up many curious natures to me and also made me the victim of not a few veteran bores.

  F. Scott Fitzgerald

  Patience, Veteran, Judgment

  F. Scott Fitzgerald (2015). “The Complete Works of F. Scott Fitzgerald: Novels, Short Stories, Poetry, Articles, Letters, Plays & Screenplays: From the author of The Great Gatsby, The Side of Paradise, Tender Is the Night, The Beautiful and Damned, The Love of the Last Tycoon, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and many other notable works”, p.9, e-artnow

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• Love is rather impotent and pitiful: My father must have told me a million times how much he loved me, but that emotion - assuming it was even real - hardly had the strength to counter the many other acts of wrong he committed against me. Contrary to romance novels and the love-conquers-all mentality that even those of us who grow up in an era of divorce are - in response to some atavistic instinct - still raised to believe, love is always a product and a victim of circumstances. It is fragile and small.

  Elizabeth Wurtzel

  Growing Up, Father, Real

  12 Copy quote

• I feel with some passion that what we truly are is private, and almost infinitely complex, and ambiguous, and both external and internal, and double- or triple- or multiply natured, and largely mysterious even to ourselves; and furthermore that what we are is only part of us, because identity, unlike "identity", must include what we do. And I think that to find oneself and every aspect of this complexity reduced in the public mind to one property that apparently subsumes all the rest ("gay", "black", "Muslim", whatever) is to be the victim of a piece of extraordinary intellectual vulgarity.

  Philip Pullman

  Passion, Gay, Thinking

  6 Copy quote

• Here is the trap you are in.... And it's not my trap—I haven't trapped you. Because abortions are illegal, women who need and want them have no choice in the matter, and you—because you know how to perform them—have no choice, either. What has been violated here is your freedom of choice, and every woman's freedom of choice, too. If abortion was legal, a woman would have a choice—and so would you. You could feel free not to do it because someone else would. But the way it is, you're trapped. Women are trapped. Women are victims, and so are you.

  John Irving

  Choices, Abortion, Needs

  4 Copy quote

• She imagined herself both queen and slave, dominatrix and victim. In her imagination she was making love with men of all skin colors--white, black, yellow--with homosexuals and beggars. She was anyone's, and anyone could do anything to her. She had one, two, three orgasms, one after another. She imagined everything she had never imagined before, and she gave herself to all that was most base and most pure.

  Paulo Coelho

  Queens, Men, Color White

  11 Copy quote

• I wondered why it had to be so poisonous. Oleanders could live through anything, they could stand heat, drought, neglect, and put out thousands of waxy blooms. So what did they need poison for? Couldn't they just be bitter? They weren't like rattlesnakes, they didn't even eat what they killed. The way she boiled it down, distilled it, like her hatred. Maybe it was a poison in the soil, something about L.A., the hatred, the callousness, something we didn't want to think about, that the plant concentrated in its tissues. Maybe it wasn't a source of poison, but just another victim.

  Janet Fitch

  Thinking, Hatred, Poison

  10 Copy quote

• The worst crime committed by totalitarian mind-sets is that they force their citizens, including their victims, to become complicit in their crimes. Dancing with your jailer, participating in your own execution, that is an act of utmost brutality.

  Azar Nafisi

  Dancing, Mind, Brutality

  Azar Nafisi (2003). “Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books”, p.76, Random House

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• Each man was his own executioner and his own victim.

  Elie Wiesel

  Men, Executioners

  Elie Wiesel (2007). “The Judges: A Novel”, p.60, Schocken

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Just as there are predatory birds, so there are predatory ideas: I came under their spell. . . .Just as the survivors say that no one will ever understand the victims, what I must tell you is that you will never understand the executioners.

  Elie Wiesel

  Ideas, Bird, Survivor

  4 Copy quote

• I would like to be judged on the validity of my arguments, not as a victim.

  Ayaan Hirsi Ali

  Argument, Infidel, Validity

  Ayaan Hirsi Ali (2008). “Infidel”, p.348, Simon and Schuster

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• I spent my time drinking and staring at a television in the airport bar. More death and destruction. Crime. Pollution. All the news stories were telling me to be frightened. All the commercials were telling me to buy things I didn´t need. The message was that people could only be passive victims or consumers.

  John Twelve Hawks

  Drinking, Airports, News Stories

  4 Copy quote

• Watch where you leave your victims! I stubbed my toe on that.

  Jonathan Stroud

  Watches, Toes

  Jonathan Stroud (2003). “Bartimaeus Trilogy, Book One: Amulet of Samarkand, The (International Edition)”, Disney-Hyperion

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• The past can't hurt you anymore. Not unless you let it. They made you into a victim, Evey. They made you into a statistic. But, that's not the real you. That's not who you are inside.

  Alan Moore

  Hurt, Real, Past

  7 Copy quote