The Poison Daughter Quotes

“I’d rather be tortured by your presence than agonized by your absence.”
― Sheila Masterson, The Poison Daughter

“The only thing more dangerous than a man with a bruised ego is a woman with a score to settle.”
― Sheila Masterson, The Poison Daughter

“In the absence of a conscience, men need something to fear. I’ve made myself their monster.”
― Sheila Masterson, The Poison Daughter

“That’s what it is to have a sister—to love her, envy her, and also be in awe at how much better than you she is. Having a sister is pressing your heart up against another heart and seeing how your hurt and triumph mirror each other. It’s saying, “There’s no pain you carry that I don’t carry too. As long as I’m here, you’re never alone.”
― Sheila Masterson, The Poison Daughter

“Born to be a queen. Cursed to wrangle the egos of men.”
― Sheila Masterson, The Poison Daughter

“To err is human. To avenge is Divine.”
― Sheila Masterson, The Poison Daughter

“Yes, I want your anger. Be as mad at me as you need to, just not from a forest away. Stay with me. Make me suffer for it. I’d rather be tortured by your presence than agonized by your absence.”
― Sheila Masterson, The Poison Daughter

“I don’t think I’m better than you,” I say. “I think we’ve been speaking your language my entire life and neither of you have bothered to learn mine. I’ve been forcing myself into a family system that doesn’t fit me”
― Sheila Masterson, The Poison Daughter

“Grief is not an absence. It’s a presence.”
― Sheila Masterson, The Poison Daughter

“My wife is trying to poison me—and I like it. I am fully entranced by her viciousness.”
― Sheila Masterson, The Poison Daughter

“One moment, he’s taunting me. The next, he’s slitting a man’s throat for touching me.”
― Sheila Masterson, The Poison Daughter

“But now I see that love is not letting the person you care for be caught with their guard down. Love is someone who helps you put your armor on, who knows how and when to help you take it off.”
― Sheila Masterson, The Poison Daughter

“The first civilizations to fall are the ones where no one speaks truth to power, where every voice must be part of a chorus or be silenced.”
― Sheila Masterson, The Poison Daughter

“I tilt her chin up so she’ll meet my eyes. “Just because you can bear your pain better doesn’t mean you should have to. We will wait until you’re well. It takes as long as it takes.”
― Sheila Masterson, The Poison Daughter

“Why all the murder?” he asks as he presses the door open. “We all need a hobby.”
― Sheila Masterson, The Poison Daughter

“Having a sister is pressing your heart up against another heart and seeing how your hurt and triumph mirror each other.”
― Sheila Masterson, The Poison Daughter

“The first civilizations to fall are the ones where no one speaks truth to power, where every voice must be part of a chorus or be silenced. In our histories from the time before our nomadic clans, we know well that those who do not embrace the diversity of their communities are doomed to die out.”
― Sheila Masterson, The Poison Daughter

“When a community is built on removing access to information—from disempowering its people—there is no one to save them when a bigger threat rises.”
― Sheila Masterson, The Poison Daughter

“When a community is built on removing access to information—from disempowering its people—there is no one to save them when a bigger threat rises. The first civilizations to fall are the ones where no one speaks truth to power, where every voice must be part of a chorus or be silenced.”
― Sheila Masterson, The Poison Daughter

“Because it’s not an appeal to their empathy that will make men fall in line. It’s the fear that they aren’t the most dangerous thing walking these streets.”
― Sheila Masterson, The Poison Daughter

“I’m homesick. This feeling is nothing new—the instinct to go home, but not to my home. Maybe it’s just the fleeting human impulse to seek shelter, to endlessly search for comfort even if you’ve never really known what it was to begin with.”
― Sheila Masterson, The Poison Daughter

“The hurt is not a dying ember—it’s the spark that helps you set this world on fire. The same place where the hurt seeps out is where the hope shines in.”
― Sheila Masterson, The Poison Daughter

“I resent that my very survival required that I understand my parents, but they have never once tried to understand me. This gives them a convenient way to be dismissive of everything I feel as an overreaction. It places all of the burden of managing our relationship on me. It means that they get to roll their eyes and act like I’m dramatic and ungrateful.”
― Sheila Masterson, The Poison Daughter

“I’ll make sure you are not a villain in this story. I will make sure you are nothing at all so that you are forgotten.”
― Sheila Masterson, The Poison Daughter

“Spite is usually the only motivation I require.”
― Sheila Masterson, The Poison Daughter

“The doubt it casts is a knife plunged in my gut that will twist any time I doubt him again. The suspicion never leaves, and he knows it. He will tie me up in knots and I will let him. Not because I don’t know better, but because I do, and I still can’t let go of the possibility that it might be different this time.”
― Sheila Masterson, The Poison Daughter

“The surprise on their faces is so typical. Men are always shocked when they meet resistance to their plans. Comfort has made them all complacent. I have no such luxury. I was very young when I learned not to expect any softness from life. Violence came for me the way it does for all women. It hunted me”
― Sheila Masterson, The Poison Daughter

“All these years and you still haven’t learned. You’ve never stopped trying to break me. But I do not break. I am the breaker.”
― Sheila Masterson, The Poison Daughter

“Violence came for me the way it does for all women. It hunted me”
― Sheila Masterson, The Poison Daughter

“Violence came for me the way it does for all women. It hunted me, and I let its blade whittle me into something too sharp to touch—so that no man could bleed me without getting bloodied too.”
― Sheila Masterson, The Poison Daughter