The conflict between the will to deny horrible events and the will to proclaim them aloud is the central dialectic of psychological trauma.

After a traumatic experience, the human system of self-preservation seems to go onto permanent alert, as if the danger might return at any moment.

Over time as most people fail the survivor's exacting test of trustworthiness, she tends to withdraw from relationships. The isolation of the survivor thus persists even after she is free.

The study of psychological trauma has repeatedly led into realms of the unthinkable and foundered on fundamental questions of belief.

In situations of captivity the perpetrator becomes the most powerful person in the life of the victim, and the psychology of the victim is shaped by the actions and beliefs of the perpetrator.

Dissociation appears to be... the internal mechanism by which terrorized people are silenced.

People who have survived atrocities often tell their stories in a highly emotional, contradictory and fragmented manner.

I'm going to lie down. Please wake me up in a couple of don't.

A moment of brilliance is not good enough to pay for your mistakes, it's taking responsibility

Unfaithfulness in the keeping of an appointment is an act of clear dishonesty. You may as well borrow a person's money as his time.

There are three marks of a superior man: being virtuous he is free from anxiety being wise he is free from perplexity being brave he is free from fear.

It's a way of living, sharing things with people who work with me, and they seem to enjoy it.

Sit and spin 'til you rot on the cosmic utensil.

All mathematical laws which we find in Nature are always suspect to me, in spite of their beauty. They give me no pleasure. They are merely auxiliaries. At close range it is all not true.

There is something servile in the habit of seeking after a law which we may obey. We may study the laws of matter at and for our convenience, but a successful life knows no law.

The West, in the form of American capitalism, is seen as having won, but people are beginning to offer alternatives again, sometimes in retrograde ways like radical Islam.

Loneliness is equal to the radius of one's awareness.