Susan Smith Quotes

We are as sick as our secrets, so I tell everything.

It does not spoil your happiness to confess your sin. The unhappiness is in not making the confession.

Maybe time would not feel as heavy if I didn't have this guilt -- the guilt of knowing the truth and stuffing it down where no one can see it, not even Tobias. Maybe I should not be so afraid of saying anything, because honesty will make me feel lighter.

I really believe guilt finds its way out of a person.

When I wrote 'We Were The Mulvaneys,' I was just old enough to look back upon my own family life and the lies of certain individuals close to me, with the detachment of time. I wanted to tell the truth about secrets: How much pain they give, yet how much relief, even happiness we may feel when at last the motive for secrecy has passed.

It feels so good to tell the truth.

Nothing makes us so lonely as our secrets.

I'm giving all that I have in this life. I'm opening up my notebook, and I'm saying everything in there out loud.

I have nothing to be ashamed of. And I love to talk about the things that I am ashamed of.

You go to someone and you think, 'I'll tell him this.' But why? The impulse is that the telling is going to relieve you. And that's why you feel awful later--you've relieved yourself, and if it truly is tragic and awful, it's not better, it's worse---the exhibitionism inherent to a confession has only made the misery worse.

I loved him in that moment, loved him more than I'd ever loved anyone, and I wanted to to tell them all that I was the snake in the grass, the monster in the lake. I wasn't worthy of this sacrifice; I was a liar, a cheat, a thief. And I would have told, except that a part of me was glad. Glad that this would all be over with soon. Baba would dismiss them, there would be some pain, but life would move on. I wanted that, to move on, to forget, to start with a clean slate. I wanted to be able to breathe again.

There's a terrible dark joy when the only person who knows all your secrets is finally dead.

I think remorse ought to stop biting the consciences that feed it.

There are only two ways of telling the complete truth - anonymously and posthumously.

By presenting a faithful and honest record of my experience as a mother, I hope to show both my readers and my children how truth can redeem even what you fear might be the gravest of sins.

Confession is good for the soul only in the sense that a tweed coat is good for dandruff - it is a palliative rather than a remedy.

I don't want any yes-men around me. I want everybody to tell me the truth even if it costs them their job.

When you get people standing up saying, 'I'm going to just tell the truth; what do we have to fear?,' it encourages others, and it creates a counterresponse.

It is such a relief to be told the truth.

Sadly, we do a much better job of making people feel guilty than we do of delivering them from the guilt we create. We need to confess this and change our ways.

To tell the truth is revolutionary.

Guilt is a poisonous illusion. Many languages don't even have a word for guilt. Sure, we all feel it. But we also get to decide if we're going to let guilt bring us down or not. Acknowledge the feelings, and then give yourself permission to let them go.

Someone needs to tell the truth, but it shouldn't be my job.

A guilty conscience needs to confess. A work of art is a confession.

Without truth I feel ashamed to be alive.