"She had wanted me to hold rape inside me like a dark pearl, keep it in there, as it grew, as I grew cramped, as it overtook me as hidden things do. Secrets become lies. I'd carried in every step I took this lie, the shame of it."

Shame, Secrets, Trauma, Truth

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"She had wanted me to hold rape inside me like a dark pearl, keep it in there, as it grew, as I grew cramped, as it overtook me as hidden things do. Secrets become lies. I'd carried in every step I took this lie, the shame of it."

Exlpore more Shame quotes

"You've got to vote for someone. It's a shame, but it's got to be done."

Whoopi Goldberg, American Actress

Shame, Vote

"I was ashamed of myself for being ashamed of myself. I didn't like feeling like that."

Benjamin Alire Saenz, American Poet

Shame, Self-Awareness, Emotion, Growth

"It doesn't seem to matter what we think...The prince will come up here and look at us as if we're barrels in a trader's wagon. And if I'm salt pork and he doesn't care for salt pork, then there's nothing I can do."

Shannon Hale, American Author

Shame, Power, Judgment, Social, Conflict

"I can see us, living in the woods, her wearing that A, me with a S maybe, S for silent, S for stupid, for scared. S for silly. For shame."

Laurie Halse Anderson, American Author

Shame, Identity, Isolation, Silence

"We would not be ashamed of doing some of the things we do in private, if the number of sane human beings who do them in public were large enough."

Mokokoma Mokhonoana, South African Philosopher

Shame, Truth, Humanity, Privacy

"It's good to feel foolish sometimes, Fjerdan."You only say that because you have no shame."

Leigh Bardugo, Israeli Author

Shame, Humor, Pride, Dialogue

"She told me that women who wore makeup had bad values. Putting on makeup would have been a statement-a rebellion. I didn't try it. I grew to feel guilty for wanting to feel attractive."

Aspen Matis, American Author

Shame, Beauty, Rebellion, Gender

"One is never so dangerous when one has no shame, than when one has grown too old to blush."

Marquis de Sade, French Novelist

Shame, Blush, Old

"Shame weakens us. It can make us frightened to take on something new. We start to withdraw from whatever might give us pleasure, self-esteem, or a sense of our value."

Sharon Salzberg, American Author

Shame, Fear, Truth, Self-Worth

"Nobody can stop you but you. And shame on you if you're the one who stops yourself."

Damon Wayans, American Comedian

Shame,

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"These tools were my parents' way of saying: What you're doing is important. We support it. We want to help you find your way."

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"It was my first lesson in the fragility of attraction."

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"I made a conscious effort to name my needs and desires. To carefully listen to and accurately identify what I felt. Hunger, exhaustion, cold, lower-back ache, thirst. The ephemeral pangs: wistfulness and loneliness. Rest fixed most things. Sleep was my sweet reward. I treated bedtime as both incentive and sacrament."

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"I wanted him to declare in shock how overlooked and underestimated I had been ever since I was a child. How lucky he felt to be the one to have discovered me, to have me. I wanted him to look at me like maybe I was magic."

Self-Worth

"I realized that the most empowering important thing was actually simply taking care of myself."

Empowerment

"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."

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"I didn't know what I would do. There was no way I could survive. I stared at my damp tent ceiling, feeling the frigid air against me, the frozen ground against my bottom, so cold my bare skin burned. I needed to get to the next trail-town, Mammoth Lakes. There was no one here to save me now."

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"When I felt strongly I would say it strongly."

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"And so, despite the complex web of paths, waterfalls, cliffs, as a hiker wanders downhill, drainages merge, faint, abstract paths coalesce, thicken, until there is one path " the one, natural, trodden way."

Direction