"One day I was able to get up, after gathering all my strength. I wanted to see myself in the mirror hanging on the opposite wall. I had not seen myself since the ghetto. From the depths of the mirror, a corpse gazed back at me. The look in his eyes, as they stared into mine, has never left me."

Trauma, Observation, Identity, Life

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"One day I was able to get up, after gathering all my strength. I wanted to see myself in the mirror hanging on the opposite wall. I had not seen myself since the ghetto. From the depths of the mirror, a corpse gazed back at me. The look in his eyes, as they stared into mine, has never left me."

Exlpore more Trauma quotes

"The first several years of my life were used to upload incredible amounts of fear, and I just became afraid of everything. I was afraid of my parents, afraid of my classmates, afraid of the streets of Washington, D.C. I would flinch at every gesture."

Henry Rollins, American Musician

Trauma, Fear, Anxiety, Childhood, Memory

"The moment her hymen was plucked from her body in the wilderness, Her soul was taken from sanity."

Roman Payne, American Novelist

Trauma, Body, Madness, Soul

"Because the past was always around her and might return at any time. It prowled the world searching for her, and she knew it was growing angrier at every passing day."

Nicholas Sparks, American Author

Trauma, Past, Fear, Memory, Escape

"I learned how to stop crying.I learned how to hide inside of myself.I learned how to be somebody else.I learned how to be cold and numb."

Sherman Alexie, American Writer

Trauma, Defense, Survival, Identity

"I stuff my mouth with old fabric and scream until there are no sounds left under my skin."

Laurie Halse Anderson, American Author

Trauma, Pain, Silence, Suffering, Emotion

"Take off your damned wrapper! The old buffer ordered, looking intensely at her lower part. Comfort was on her knees, rubbing the old man's dirty feet. All her plea and tears continually worsen the whole matter. I want to do you harder cos you gonna be fucked by other folks who needs a large hole, said the man, moving towards her. Comfort struggled with all her feminine might, but the old masculine but old man ripped her wrapper and slapped her on the face. Lie here, Lie here! I'm gonna do what your old man did to your mama and its gonna sweet you. She screamed as the man's organ prick her glory hole like a sharp needle."

Michael Bassey Johnson, Nigerian Philosopher

Trauma, Abuse, Violence, Power

"The old Amy, the girl of the big laugh and the easy ways, literally shed herself, a pile of skin and soul on the floor, and stepped this new, brittle, bitter Amy ... a razor-wire knot daring me to unloop her, and I was not up to the job with my thick, numb, nervous fingers. Country fingers. Flyover fingers untrained in the intricate, dangerous work of 'solving Amy'. When I'd hold up the bloody stumps, she'd sigh and turn to her secret mental notebooks on which she tallied all my deficiencies, forever noting disappointments, frailties, shortcomings."

Gillian Flynn, American Author

Trauma, Pain, Change, Identity, Healing

"As Jess watched in numb horror, the man tore a page from the book and stuffed it into his mouth."

Rachel Caine, Canadian Actress

Trauma, Horror, Fear, Emotion, Violence

"Meredith's father, the composer, who shot himself in this house. Came all the way from Vienna to shoot himself in LA. Escaped the Nazis but not himself."

Janet Fitch, American Author

Trauma, History, Sorrow, Loss

"It took me years to stop feeling the guilt she made sure I kept feeling about what happened with him. He is a sick person that molests children, but I felt so bad about it for so long. I couldn't talk to a single person about any of this. No one. And she made me feel so bad about it all that I felt I shouldn't talk about it, even if there was someone. I felt ashamed and thought I was an awful person. Sometimes I still do. My mother abandoned me in the worst ways possible."

Ashly Lorenzana, American Writer

Trauma, Guilt, Abuse, Shame

Explore more quotes by Elie Wiesel

"All this under a magnificent blue sky."

Nature

"I'm a teacher and a writer; my life is words. When I see the denigration of language, it hurts me, and it's easy to denigrate a word by trivializing it."

Writing

"A person can almost be defined by his or her attitude toward gratitude."

Emotion

"We were masters of nature, masters of the world. We had forgotten everything--death, fatigue, our natural needs. Stronger than cold or hunger, stronger than the shots and the desire to die, condemned and wandering, mere numbers, we were the only men on earth."

Survival

"I needed to know that there was such a thing as love and that it brought smiles and joy in its wake."

Joy

"Our backyard looked like a marketplace. Valuable objects, precious rugs, silver candlesticks, Bibles and other ritual objects were strewn over the dusty grounds- pitiful relics that seemed never to have had a home. All this under a magnificent blue sky."

Lifestyle

"After all, God is God because he remembers."

Faith

"Write only if you cannot live without writing. Write only what you alone can write."

Creativity

"We must take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silent encourages the tormentor, never the tormented."

Morality

"The world? The world is not interested in us. Today, everything is possible, even the crematoria..."

Reality