Denis Johnson Quotes

Bruises fade father, but the pain remains the same. And I still remember how you kept me so afraid.

So many people suffer from abuse, and suffer alone.

I hated my whole childhood, hated it, hated it, hated it. There was no place for me.

I was a child, and my mother was psychotic. She loved me, but I didn't really feel I had a mother. And when you live with somebody who is paranoid and thinks you're trying to kill them all the time, you tend to feel a little betrayed.

For some people, it is easier to command a nation, to send thousands to their deaths in unnecessary wars, to separate children from their families and inflict terrible suffering, than to process their own trauma and pain.

I grew up with an extremely abusive father. As a mother, I wanted to protect my own children from exposure to violence. When I found out one of my daughters was in an abusive relationship, it broke my heart. Finally, she left him ?- but only after his abuse started spreading to the children.

Whores, instead of claiming what's rightfully yours. Pierced a hole in my heart from all the pain you caused, with no direction you left your first born lost.

Not all forms of abuse leave bruises.

You slammed my face down on the barbecue grill, now my scars are all healing, but my heart never will.

My oldest brother was stabbed thirty to forty times and strangled to death with his own belt when I was eight years old. Much of my life has been pockmarked with violence. So I had a natural interest in the topic, along with a strong home-field advantage.

But I'm very thankful that no one is slamming my head against the wall anymore.

I never had a true childhood.

Having gone through what I went through, watching my family be torn to shreds and my children suffer immensely, I can't be the agent of doing that to someone else. I can't be the agent of causing someone to go to prison.

I pretended I was living with a television family and there was no yelling at home and no one hit me.

I didn't have a childhood.

I know from my own clinical work that when people are beaten and hurt, they numb out so that they can't feel anymore.

My parents had this relationship that was really terrifying. I mean, the level of hatred that they had, and the level of physical abuse - my mother would beat up my father, basically - and I think I was drawn to images on television that were bright and reflective.

I've overcome neglect and deprivation, abandonment and abuse.

I had a very difficult upbringing.

I didn't have a childhood.

My childhood was appalling.

I got hit a lot. I'm glad I lived through it.

I am a woman like any other and ugly things happen to me like any other women.

My mother would beat me so bad, I wouldn't be able to sit down. And I would never snitch.