Rudyard Kipling Quotes

The abuse dies in a day, but the denial slays the life of the people, and entombs the hope of the race.

Victims always feel alone and helpless.

In the case of 'Ocean at the End of the Lane,' it's a book about helplessness. It's a book about family, it's a book about being 7 in a world of people who are bigger than you, and more dangerous, and stepping into territory that you don't entirely understand.

It is hard work to be good when you are very little and very hungry, and have many sticks to beat you, and no mother's lips to kiss you.

I think children in general have a very hard time - at least I did - expressing any pain because I didn't want to hurt the people that I loved.

I feel extremely vulnerable.

Adults under threat feel like children.

Everyone picked on me in school because I was in foster care.

I grew up in an abusive home and was told on a daily basis by my father that I would never amount to anything and that I looked like a boy.

Definition of a victim: a person to whom life happens.

I had been, you know, held in the closet for two months and, you know, abused in all manner of ways. I was very good at doing what I was told.

My father died when I was 9 years old. The miserable condition of my family at that time is beyond description. My family, solitary and without influence, became at once the target of much insult and abuse.

A lot of children grow up in poverty with flawed parents, but their inner world is still as inherently filled with wonder and innocence as children who are kept away from the city's underbelly.

The powerlessness of the child is often forgotten. And after it comes the terrifying phase of moving into adulthood.

Childhood was terrifying for me. A kid has no control. You're three feet tall, flat broke, unemployed, and illiterate. Terror snaps you awake. You pay keen attention. People can just pick you up and move you and put you down.

I was mugged when I was 12. I had a portable radio, and I ran into this building and these two guys came in and hit me, busted me up and took the radio. After that I was very paranoid and I started taking kung fu and karate. But I didn't want to fight.

I mean, being a child was being a child, was being a creature without power, without pocket money, without escape routes of any kind. So I didn't want to be a child.

I had trained myself not to go to the bathroom throughout my elementary and junior high school years because I was bullied. And you don't understand why you're being bullied, so you just suppress it.

I come from a place where there's violence and inarticulacy. I worked in a pub from the age of 12 or 13. I used to see people smashing glasses over each other. I was never tough. I was scared of them.

I went out every single night so I was never alone with my stepfather. At 12, I stopped going on holiday with them. The times I was alone with him I always made sure I was all covered up.

Childhood can be hell. One reason … is that as a child you have no power.

Why should I? No one would wish to hurt me.

You show me a murderer, and I'll show you a person who's been failed in the supreme need for love, who never learned how to love, and will hate

People whose lives are barren and insecure seem to show a greater willingness to obey than people who are self-sufficient and self-confident.

I'm a little girl; no one wants to beat up on me.