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"I had stripped naked in front of men. Drunk. In morning's somber brightness I tried to remember why I had done it. Total exposure had seemed like the only way to be seen more clearly, heard, but now it seemed the opposite: a wild act that would define me."
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"I think no more than a week after I started writing I ran into the first block. It's hard to describe it in a way that will be understandable to anyone who is not a neurotic. I will try. All my life I have been haunted by the obsession that to desire a thing or to love a thing intensely is to place yourself in a vulnerable position, to be a possible, if not a probable, loser of what you most want. Let's leave it like that. That block has always been there and always will be, and my chance of getting, or achieving, anything that I long for will always be gravely reduced by the interminable existence of that block."
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Personal Development
"In our age it is not sex that raises its ugly head, but love."
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Personal Development
"Turns out rolling your eyes in a bar when 'Land Down Under' plays is like someone belching during the Star Spangled Banner in America."
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Personal Development
"I had stripped naked in front of men. Drunk. In morning's somber brightness I tried to remember why I had done it. Total exposure had seemed like the only way to be seen more clearly, heard, but now it seemed the opposite: a wild act that would define me."
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Personal Development
"To a sensitive being, pity is not seldom pain."
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Personal Development
"At night we cry sometimes, and if you think that just applies to the females then you have never been in combat, because everyone cries sooner or later. Everyone cries."
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Personal Development
"Maybe we don't ever feel that sweetly untainted and wholly majestic kind of love that takes every longing captive because we are hopelessly entangled in the illogical fear that despite all of love's grand goodness, it might not be good enough to keep us safe."
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Personal Development
"It's very true; there are many more iron pots certainly than porcelain. But you may depend on it that every one bears some mark; even the hardest iron pots have a little bruise, a little hole somewhere. I flatter myself that I'm rather stout, but if I must tell you the truth I've beenshockingly chipped and cracked. I do very well for service yet, because I've been cleverly mended; and I try to remain in the cupboard-the quiet, dusky cupboard where there's an odour of stale spices-as much as I can. Butwhen I've to come out and into a strong light-then, my dear, I'm a horror!"
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Personal Development
"When he is cheerful--when the sun shines into his mind--then I venture to peep in, just as far as the light reaches, but no further. It is holy ground where the shadow falls!"
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Personal Development
"The tendency to trust easily anyone gives way to a certain vulnerability."
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"From that unremarkable gap in dense northern forest, I could finally see clearly that if I hadn't walked away from school, through devastating beauty alone on the Pacific Crest Trail, met rattlesnakes and bears, fording frigid and remote rivers as deep as I am tall-feeling terror and the gratitude that followed the realization that I'd survived rape-I'd have remained lost, maybe for my whole life. The trail had shown me how to change.This is the story of how my recklessness became my salvation.I wrote it."
Healing
"The bravest thing I ever did was leave there. The next bravest thing I did was come back, to make myself heard."
Courage
"The trees were friendly, they gave me rest and shadowed refuge. Slipping through them, I felt safe and competent. My whole body was occupied. I had little energy to think or worry."
Nature
"She taught me only how to need to be taken care of. I was here because I needed to learn to take responsibility for making my own decisions - to earn my own trust."
Responsibility
"He hadn't treated me with the love and compassion I wanted, but I was worthy of that love, and someday some boy would have it for me. I hadn't found it yet, but I would find it soon."
Love
"The wisdom of my body had cultivated vibrantly since those sadness-drunken months after the rape when I'd felt so numbed by the hurt and shame that I didn't move further. No longer. The way I felt about being sexually shamed had changed. Now I was angry that others were trying to shame my sexuality in the first place. I flushed-this time not in shame-but in rage."
Empowerment
"Death is not a pretty flower that had almost pricked me. It was not a small annoyance I could simply bypass and quickly disregard. It was really The End."
Death
"I sensed he was the one who might be able to see me clearly, the way I most wished to be seen."
Connection
"Though I was starved for contact, I didn't stop to talk to any of these strangers. I had forgotten how to convincingly speak the polite things strangers say to each other."
Loneliness
"I walked without breaks, slept through nights without waking, inhumanly smooth " a small machine."
Endurance
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