Sarah Vowell Quotes

An abusive relationship should be easy to identify though often one of the most difficult to end.

Why stay with him, he uses you just like a human punching bag?

If you chose to be with an abusive man, a powerful, abusive man, it reflects something about who you are and what you want for yourself.

Caroline says as she gets up from the floor, you can hit me all you want to, but I don't love you anymore.

An abusive relationship is worse than being in prison. I mean literally, not figuratively.

I feel very sorry for people who are trapped in an abusive relationship and keep making excuses for their abuser.

If I ever loved a woman, the more I loved her, the more I wanted to hurt her. Frida was only the most obvious victim of this disgusting trait.

As far as I'm concerned, love means fighting, big fat lies, and a couple of slaps across the face.

Daddy loves you, but he smacks you, and he can shout at you and smash things, but Daddy still loves you. So when you get into a relationship with someone who does all of that, why would it be unusual?

She lived in fear of his shifting moods, his volatile temperament, his insistence on steering even mundane exchanges down a confrontational path that, on occasion, he would resolve with punches, slaps, kicks, and sometimes try to make amends for with polluted apologies, and sometimes not.

When someone shows you how little you mean to them and you keep coming back for more, before you know it you start to mean less to yourself.

I find that truly heartbreaking that, like, it's such a common, constant thing in people's lives - a brutal abuse of people by other people, and it's just accepted.

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.

I hope more women see, at least eventually, that a healthy relationship isn't anything that breaks you down.

When I get the strength to leave, you always tell me that you need me. And I'm weak cause I believe you and I'm mad because I love you. So I stop and think that maybe you could learn to appreciate me, and it all remains the same that you ain't never gonna change.

Tal told me he loved me, and told me and told me, but you don't tell someone that and then tell them they're not experienced enough in bed and should read a book or something to learn, or they should try wearing deep-red lipstick and tight skirts to look hot like their best friend once in a while. If Tal hadn't lied to me when he said he loved me, I might not be without a future right now, a sucker who was so chickenshit she allowed herself to believe a false dream from a false god. I'm not sure I ever even liked Tal, much less loved him.

When we were first married, I thought he must have been the most heartless, hateful man I'd ever known, but he was just as much a prisonor as I was. Where Vaughn imprisoned me with walls, he imprisoned his son with ignorance.

She was in a terrible marriage and she couldn't talk to anyone. He used to hit her, and in the beginning she told him that if it ever happened again, she would leave him. He swore that it wouldn't and she believed him. But it only got worse after that, like when his dinner was cold, or when she mentioned that she'd visited with one of the neighbors who was walking by with his dog. She just chatted with him, but that night, her husband threw her into a mirror.

when pain has been intertwined with love and closeness, it's very difficult to believe that love and closeness can be experienced without pain.

Don't correct me, you don't have any rights over me." "What kind of life is this? So I sit at home , entirely dependent on this man, and then it turns out his heart was never with me. How is it possible to force someone to love me?

When it comes to my interpersonal relationships with men, of course, a lifetime of abuse vastly affected everything I did. I always came from a place of abuse, actually wanting, welcoming, and accepting it because that was my language. It never seemed strange to me.

A bad relationship can do that, can make you doubt everything good you ever felt about yourself.

Few people who are hit once by someone they love respond in the way they might to a singular physical assault by a stranger.

I don’t like you, Park. Sometimes I think I live for you

That's how disagreements always ended with Hugh Hefner; he would just stomp off, and you were left to pick the pieces of your self-worth up off the floor. I'd invested every part of myself in the mansion and had nothing waiting for me outside those gates. I felt so trapped and so vulnerable to his criticisms.