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#1

“Alexandria's first librarian, Zenodotus, attempted to put this mass of scrolls in order. The first scrolls were inventoried and then organized alphabetically, with a tag affixed to the end of each scroll indicating the author, title, and subject. These three categories came to define the traditional card catalog and are still the cornerstone of library cataloging.”
― Library of Congress, The Card Catalog: Books, Cards, and Literary Treasures

tags: books, card-catalog, history, libraries, library

1 likes

#2

“Most historians agree that the decline of the Great Library of Alexandria was due to what endangers libraries of the present day--general indifference and bureaucratic neglect.”
― Library of Congress, The Card Catalog: Books, Cards, and Literary Treasures

tags: books, libraries, library, library-of-alexandria

4 likes

#3

“Libraries represent the sole contemporary American institution with the potential for making available a wide-ranging, genuinely diverse spectrum of opinions, cultural expressions, and ideas in an environment that is commercial-free and huckster-free, a commons where people can gather and select, in an un-intimidating atmosphere, whatever interests them, delights them, or even repels them--whatever they want to know about.”
― Sanford Berman

4 likes

#4

“...if we as librarians do not give authority, respectability, and support to new ideas and new voices, who will? If we do not provide our patrons with access to revolutionary ideas and methods of communication, who will?”
― Julie Bartel, From A To Zine: Building A Winning Zine Collection In Your Library

tags: librarian, libraries, library, zines

1 likes

#5

“Has he ever trapped you in a room and not let you out?
Has he ever raised a fist as if he were going to hit you?
Has he ever thrown an object that hit you or nearly did?
Has he ever held you down or grabbed you to restrain you?
Has he ever shoved, poked, or grabbed you?
Has he ever threatened to hurt you?
If the answer to any of these questions is yes, then we can stop wondering whether he’ll ever be violent; he already has been.”
― Lundy Bancroft, Why Does He Do That? Inside the Minds of Angry and Controlling Men

tags: abuse, abusive-men, domestic-violence, physical-abuse

222 likes

#6

“Sometimes the briefest moments capture us, force us to take them in, and demand that we live the rest of our lives in reference to them.”
― Lucy Grealy, Autobiography of a Face

72 likes

#7

“I used to think that once you really knew a thing, its truth would shine on forever. Now it's pretty obvious to me that more often than not the batteries fade, and sometimes what you knew even goes out with a bang when you try and call on it, just like a light bulb cracking off when you throw the switch.”
― Lucy Grealy

tags: enlightenment, knowledge, memory, truth

31 likes

#8

“I treated despair in terms of hierarchy: if there was a more important pain in the world, it meant my own was negated. I thought I simply had to accept the fact that I was ugly, and that to feel despair about it was simply wrong.”
― Lucy Grealy, Autobiography of a Face

11 likes

#9

“I used to think truth was eternal, that once I knew, once I saw, it would be with me forever, a constant by which everything else could be measured. I know now that this isn't so, that most truths are inherently unretainable, that we have to work hard all our lives to remember the most basic things. Society is no help. It tells us again and again that we can most be ourselves by acting and looking like someone else...”
― Lucy Grealy, Autobiography of a Face

15 likes

#10

“I began a lifelong affair with nostalgia, with only the vaguest notions of what I was nostalgic for.”
― Lucy Grealy

tags: nostalgia

6 likes

#11

“Clench clench these strong teeth in this strong mouth. My mouth. Of my body. In my house. My mouth? Chapped lips swollen and bloody? Dream dreaming wide and thunder? My mouth! My God! This is me speaking. Not mouthing. Not typing and twitching. Not writing a suicide note the length of a novel that will never be finished. I hear voices now but I know they are not the voices of fathers or lovers, or mothers or angels or demons, but the sounds of my own private wars echoing the battles of women before me and near me. No wonder I do not make people comfortable. I am a mirror. I have far too many things to say. (p. 237-238)”
― Camilla Gibb, Mouthing the Words

tags: silence, trauma

14 likes

#12

“In order to escape accountability for his crimes, the perpetrator does everything in his power to promote forgetting. If secrecy fails, the perpetrator attacks the credibility of his victim. If he cannot silence her absolutely, he tries to make sure no one listens.”
― Judith Lewis Herman, Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence - From Domestic Abuse to Political Terror

tags: abuse, abuse-survivors, abuser, abusers, attack-on-character, attacking-people, backlash, break-the-silence, child-sexual-abuse, child-sexual-abuse-survivor, crazy, credibility, denial, false-memories, false-memory-myth, false-memory-syndrome-campaign, healing-from-abuse, hysterical, incest, insane, just-tell, lack-of-accountability, lying, perpetrator, perpetrators, pschological-abuse, rape-culture, rape-myths, rape-survivor, secrecy, sexual-abuse, sexual-assault, sexual-violence, survivor, survivors, unstable, victimized, victimizing

369 likes

#13

“By developing a contaminated, stigmatized identity, the child victim takes the evil of the abuser into herself and thereby preserves her primary attachments to her parents. Because the inner sense of badness preserves a relationship, it is not readily given up even after the abuse has stopped; rather, it becomes a stable part of the child's personality structure.”
― Judith Lewis Herman, Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence - From Domestic Abuse to Political Terror

tags: abuse, attachment, betrayal, betrayal-trauma, child-abuse, complex-ptsd, identity, incest, parental-abuse, personality, personality-disorder, self-stigma, stigmatization, victims

66 likes

#14

“It is very tempting to take the side of the perpetrator. All the perpetrator asks is that the bystander do nothing. He appeals to the universal desire to see, hear, and speak no evil. The victim, on the contrary, asks the bystander to share the burden of pain. The victim demands action, engagement, and remembering.”
― Judith Lewis Herman, Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence--From Domestic Abuse to Political Terror

59 likes

#15

“The traumatic moment becomes encoded in an abnormal form of memory, which breaks spontaneously into consciouness, both as flashbacks during waking states and as traumatic nightmares during sleep. Small, seemingly insignificant reminders can also evoke these memories, which often return with all the vividness and emotional force of the original event. Thus, even normally safe environments may come to feel dangerous, for the survivor can never be assured that she will not encounter some reminder of the trauma.”
― Judith Lewis Herman, Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence - From Domestic Abuse to Political Terror

tags: flashbacks, memory, nightmares, ptsd, recovered-memories, repressed-memories, trauma, trauma-memories, trauma-memory, traumatic-experiences, traumatic-stress, traumatization, traumatized, triggers

33 likes

#16

“MOST PEOPLE have no knowledge or understanding of the psychological changes of captivity. Social judgment of chronically traumatized people therefore tends to be extremely harsh.”
― Judith Lewis Herman, Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence--From Domestic Abuse to Political Terror

26 likes

#17

“The first principle of recovery is the empowerment of the survivor. She must be the author and arbiter of her own recovery. Others may offer advice, support, assistance, affection, and care, but not cure.”
― Judith Lewis Herman, Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence--From Domestic Abuse to Political Terror

27 likes

#18

“In order to gain their freedom, survivors may have to give up almost everything else. Battered women may lose their homes, their friends, and their livelihood. Survivors of childhood abuse may lose their families. Political refugees may lose their homes and their homeland. Rarely are the dimensions of this sacrifice fully recognized.”
― Judith Lewis Herman, Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence--From Domestic Abuse to Political Terror

21 likes

#19

“Working with victimized people requires a committed moral stance. The therapist is called upon to bear witness to a crime. She must affirm a position of solidarity with the victim. This does not mean a simplistic notion that the victim can do no wrong; rather, it involves an understanding of the fundamental injustice of the traumatic experience and the need for a resolution that restores some sense of justice.”
― Judith Lewis Herman, Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence--From Domestic Abuse to Political Terror

18 likes

#20

“To hold traumatic reality in consciousness requires a social context that affirms and protects the victim and that joins the victim and witness in a common alliance. For the individual victim, this social context is created by relationships with friends, lovers, and family. For the larger society, the social context is created by political movements that give voice to the disempowered.”
― Judith Lewis Herman, Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence - From Domestic Abuse to Political Terror

tags: abuse, abuse-survivors, child-sexual-abuse, perpetrator, ptsd, sexual-abuse, society-denial, survivors, trauma, victim, witness

23 likes

#21

“Repetition is the mute language of the abused child.”
― Judith Lewis Herman, Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence--From Domestic Abuse to Political Terror

13 likes

#22

“I have tried to communicate my ideas in a language that preserves connections, a language that is faithful both to the dispassionate, reasoned traditions of my profession and to the passionate claims of people who have been violated and outraged. I have tried to find a language that can withstand the imperatives of doublethink and allows all of us to come a little closer to facing the unspeakable.”
― Judith Lewis Herman, Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence - From Domestic Abuse to Political Terror

tags: abuse, atrocitis, complex-ptsd, double-think, doublethink, horror-of-incest, horror-of-rape, horror-of-war, rape, recovery, trauma, trauma-and-recovery, traumatic-experiences, unspeakable, violated, violations, violations-of-human-rights

12 likes

#23

“HYPERAROUSAL
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. Physiological arousal continues unabated. In this state of hyerarousal, which is the first cardinal symptom of post-traumatic stress disorder, the traumatized person startles easily, reacts irritably to small provocations, and sleeps poorly. Kardiner propsed that "the nucleus of the [traumatic] neurosis is physioneurosis."8 He believed that many of the symptoms observed in combat veterans of the First World War-startle reactions, hyperalertness, vigilance for the return of danger, nightmares, and psychosomatic complaints-could be understood as resulting from chronic arousal of the autonomic nervous system. He also interpreted the irritability and explosively aggressive behavior of traumatized men as disorganized fragments of a shattered "fight or flight" response to overwhelming danger.”
― Judith Lewis Herman, Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence - From Domestic Abuse to Political Terror

tags: aggression, aggressive-behavior, combat-ptsd, fight-or-flight, fight-or-flight-response, hyperarousal, hypervigilance, irritability, military, neurosis, post-traumatic-stress-disorder, posttraumatic-stress-disorder, ptsd, trauma, traumatized, world-war-1, world-war-one

8 likes

#24

“Women quickly learn that rape is only a crime in theory; in practice the standard for what constitutes rape is not set at the level of experience of women's violation but just above the level of coercion acceptable to men.”
― Judith Lewis Herman, Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence - From Domestic Abuse to Political Terror

tags: coercion, rape, violence

8 likes

#25

“To say we know a person is to write that person off. This is at times life’s necessity. We run out of time or patience or curiosity; or we depart, willingly or not, from the situation that makes investigation possible and necessary. A person written off may become a character - depending on the charity of memory.”
― Yiyun Li, Dear Friend, from My Life I Write to You in Your Life

2 likes

#26

“Soon I will die, he said, and then what everyone has been so afraid of for so long will have finally happened, and then everyone can rest.”
― Marie Howe, What the Living Do

5 likes

#27

“What happened in our house taught my brothers how to leave, how to walk down a sidewalk without looking back.”
― Marie Howe, What the Living Do

5 likes

#28

“even if I could go back in time to her as me, the age I am now she would never come into my arms without believing that I wanted something.”
― Marie Howe, What the Living Do

2 likes

#29

“No one feels another's grief, no one understands another's joy. People imagine that they can reach one another. In reality they only pass each other by.”
― Franz Schubert

49 likes

#30

“Most people can motivate themselves to do things simply by knowing that those things need to be done. But not me. For me, motivation is this horrible, scary game where I try to make myself do something while I actively avoid doing it. If I win, I have to do something I don't want to do. And if I lose, I'm one step closer to ruining my entire life. And I never know whether I'm going to win or lose until the last second.”
― Allie Brosh, Hyperbole and a Half: Unfortunate Situations, Flawed Coping Mechanisms, Mayhem, and Other Things That Happened

tags: accurate, motivation, self-discipline, self-motivation

403 likes

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