In the Blood Quotes

“What does it mean to forgive someone? It only means that you release the anger, the hatred. It doesn't mean that you’re saying it’s all right now, or that you've forgotten the wrong. It just means that you've drained the boil. When you touch it, it doesn't hurt as much. That's all.”
― Lisa Unger, In the Blood

“I think we draw people into our lives. It’s as though we broadcast our deepest needs, and certain people hear the signal somewhere in their own subconscious and heed the call. For better or worse, we attract our teachers, our allies, and sometimes even our nightmares. Some of us have louder signals.”
― Lisa Unger, In the Blood

“We have more patience for girls who act like boys than boys who act like girls. A tomboy is considered cute. One day she’ll shuck her muddy jeans and put on a dress, and everyone will gasp at her beauty. They’ll all laugh about her tree-climbing, frog-catching days.

But there’s no such tolerance for the boy who puts on a dress, who wants a toy kitchen or a baby doll to love. Jung would say that this is because, even culturally, our anima is repressed, hated, derided. We hate our female selves. A boyish girl is perfectly acceptable. A girlish boy? Not so much. In certain places, you’d get your ass kicked, find yourself "gay-bashed." You might even get yourself killed. That's how much we hate our anima.”
― Lisa Unger, In the Blood

“But did you know that eyewitness testimony is often totally unreliable? The human memory only records events through the filter of its own frame of reference. We try to fit the information we receive into schemas, units of knowledge that we possess about the world that correspond with frequently encountered situations, individuals, ideas, and situations. In other words, we often see things as we expect to see them, or want to see them, and not always as they are.”
― Lisa Unger, In the Blood

“They don’t find peace. It’s pure bullshit. When something unspeakable happens, or when you do something unspeakable, it changes you. It takes you apart and reassembles you. You are a Frankenstein of circumstance, and the parts never fit back quite right and the life you live is a stolen one. You don’t deserve to walk among the living, and you know it.”
― Lisa Unger, In the Blood

“Is the prey complicit in its own demise? Are we not seduced in some small way by the beauty, the grace, even the dangerous soul of the predator?”
― Lisa Unger, In the Blood

“Every couple starts off loving each other, don't they? It's how a relationship ends that really defines its nature.”
― Lisa Unger, In the Blood

“What we think of as our “gut instincts” are really a very complex mosaic of past experiences, deep-seated hopes, fears, desires.”
― Lisa Unger, In the Blood

“But that’s the thing about mental illness; there’s no such thing as a cookie-cutter diagnosis. We’re all crazy in our own special way. Some of us just have it worse than others.”
― Lisa Unger, In the Blood

“I should have been sending up flares, instead I was offering smiles.”
― Lisa Unger, In the Blood

“When someone we love dies suddenly and tragically, it’s like seeing the curvature of the earth. You always knew it was round, a contained sphere floating in space. But when you see the bend in the horizon line, it changes your perspective on everything else.”
― Lisa Unger, In the Blood

“As parents, we must accept that our children are who they are. We can’t make them into something we want, or be disappointed in them because they don’t meet our artificial expectations.”
― Lisa Unger, In the Blood

“You can put on a mask and a costume for the rest of the world, but you can't hide from the people who changed your diapers.”
― Lisa Unger, In the Blood

“Sticks and stones can break your bones, but words can break your heart.”
― Lisa Unger, In the Blood

“We hate our parents for having their own lives, don’t we, for making decisions for themselves that don’t seem to take us into account. They’re not people, not really. They’re parents; how dare they live and love and die without us?”
― Lisa Unger, In the Blood

“We count so much on politeness, those of us who are hiding things. We count on people not staring too long, or asking too many questions.”
― Lisa Unger, In the Blood

“when we put on clothes, we’re telling ourselves something, and we’re communicating that something to every person we meet.”
― Lisa Unger, In the Blood

“In that moment,feeling my isolation in a way I never had before, I thought about calling her. But I didn't want to hear the fear and disappointment in her voice. I didn't want to to deal with her expectations of me. Maybe that's why we choose to isolate ourselves, those of us who do. Because in so many ways, it's just easier.”
― Lisa Unger, In the Blood

“Dysfunction isn’t a choice, it’s a disease.”
― Lisa Unger, In the Blood

“Honestly, it’s the most you can ask of men sometimes. They’re so wound up, so buried beneath layers of “boys don’t cry,” and “pussy,” and “man up,” that they don’t even know how to feel about anything. I should know.”
― Lisa Unger, In the Blood

“When you hate women, you hate all the female elements of your own psychology. Jung believed that there were two primary anthropomorphic archetypes of the unconscious mind. The animus is the unconscious male, and the anima is the unconscious female. Because a man’s anima, his more sensitive, feeling side, must so often be repressed, it forms the ultimate shadow self—a dark side that is hated and buried. Jung was a big believer in accepting the shadow, embracing it . . . or suffering the consequences in psychic pain.”
― Lisa Unger, In the Blood

“What does it mean to forgive someone? It only means that you release the anger, the hatred. It doesn’t mean that you’re saying it’s all right now, or that you’ve forgotten the wrong. It just means that you’ve drained the boil. When you touch it, it doesn’t hurt as much. That’s all.”
― Lisa Unger, In the Blood

“I liked how she never offered any physical comfort. I appreciate people who have a healthy respect for personal boundaries. Our culture is too touchy-feely; everyone wants a hug these days. But Dr. Cooper just sat and was present.”
― Lisa Unger, In the Blood

“It was human nature to see only what you want to see, and nothing would change that, no matter what tools people had at their disposal. The truth is only what you think it is.”
― Lisa Unger, In the Blood

“I have started taking the pills and I pray that everyone is right, that I have been sabotaged by my own brain chemicals. And that the little blue pill is going to put things right again.”
― Lisa Unger, In the Blood

“Love, a promise delivered already broken.”
― Lisa Unger, In the Blood

“The human mind, with all its mystery, bears endless study. Doesn’t it?”
― Lisa Unger, In the Blood

“I think we draw people into our lives...It's as though we broadcast our deepest needs...For better or worse, we attract our teachers, our allies, and sometimes even our own nightmares.”
― Lisa Unger, In the Blood

“The United States is excellent at breeding psychopaths—a country where we reward the individual with a hyperfocus on success at any cost. We reward narcissism—with our social networks and hideous reality television programs. We laud business leaders, even as they abuse workers, rape the environment. In other cultures, where the individual subordinates himself more freely to the needs of family and society, we see fewer psychopaths. So”
― Lisa Unger, In the Blood

“I think we draw people into our lives. It’s as though we broadcast our deepest needs, and certain people hear the signal somewhere in their own subconscious and heed the call. For better or worse, we attract our teachers, our allies, and sometimes even our nightmares. Some of us have louder signals. Some of us have more sensitive receptors.”
― Lisa Unger, In the Blood