The Hand That Feeds You Quotes

“A man enjoys the happiness he feels, and a woman the happiness she gives.”
― A.J. Rich, The Hand That Feeds You

“The closest term to sociopath is antisocial personality disorder. The criteria for diagnosis include impairments in self-esteem, self-direction, empathy, intimacy, plus the use of manipulation and deceit, and the presence of hostility, callousness, irresponsibility, impulsivity, and a lack of concern for one’s limitations: risk-taking.”
― A.J. Rich, The Hand That Feeds You

“I felt something quieter, but no less consuming. Shame. Humiliation is what you feel in front of others; shame is what you feel alone. Shame is harder to shake.”
― A.J. Rich, The Hand That Feeds You

“Bipolar disease is one of the rare instances where a predator and a victim can occupy the same body at the same time.”
― A.J. Rich, The Hand That Feeds You

“She said that sex, even in a dream, is life affirming.”
― A.J. Rich, The Hand That Feeds You

“The city campus was spread out over five square blocks in the West Fifties, near Roosevelt Hospital. The building always photographed, built in 1903 of marble and red brick, the one you might find on an Ivy League campus, housed the administration.”
― A.J. Rich, The Hand That Feeds You

“The last funeral I had attended was Kathy’s, a “green” funeral. No coffin, no headstone; we carried her shroud-wrapped body on a handcart deep into a forest in her native Virginia to a designated area where we, her friends, dug the grave. Kathy weighed practically nothing at the end. We lifted her off the cart and laid her in the ground. After we filled the grave, we scattered leaves over the freshly turned earth and brushed away our footprints with branches.”
― A.J. Rich, The Hand That Feeds You

“Curiosity conquers fear even more than bravery does.”
― A.J. Rich, The Hand That Feeds You

“I knew some people looked for—believed in—closure. How I loathed that false notion, that one could tie up the loose ends of mystery and grief. Did that mean one stopped being haunted day and night? Did it mean one could get on with one’s life, such as it was? I thought it was a cruel term, a grail that could never be found.”
― A.J. Rich, The Hand That Feeds You

“We all have a fantasy that collides with reality.”
― A.J. Rich, The Hand That Feeds You

“I could not forgive myself. Forgive yourself for what? my brother and McKenzie asked. For thinking the best of people? For having a trusting heart? But I needed to find another way to think about forgiveness—some people think the ability to forgive will just come to them at a certain point, but others recognize that it can be a choice. That it can manifest as another form of empathy, a gift to oneself.”
― A.J. Rich, The Hand That Feeds You

“After great pain, a formal feeling comes— / The Nerves sit ceremonious, like Tombs—”
― A.J. Rich, The Hand That Feeds You

“I needed to pass people whose mistakes I knew nothing about.”
― A.J. Rich, The Hand That Feeds You

“For a moment, I mistook a streetlight for the moon.”
― A.J. Rich, The Hand That Feeds You

“He walked confidently, as though he walked to a tune in his head that I would have liked to hear, too.”
― A.J. Rich, The Hand That Feeds You

“Turn an upset into a game or a story, and you move ahead of it, maybe even to a place of not caring.”
― A.J. Rich, The Hand That Feeds You

“Not all sociopaths are psychopaths. It’s not just a matter of degree. The predisposition to violence is high in a psychopath, whereas it varies in the sociopath. In criminal behavior the psychopath leaves clues, whereas the sociopath schemes to minimize exposure. Most pertinent to my research was that a psychopath is unable to maintain a normal relationship, while a sociopath can appear superficially normal while actually functioning as a social predator.”
― A.J. Rich, The Hand That Feeds You

“That it lasted a couple of beats longer than expected was something that I would think back on in the months to come.”
― A.J. Rich, The Hand That Feeds You

“I was aware of a kind of intimacy that comes from two people aligned with each other fixing their gaze on something outside themselves.”
― A.J. Rich, The Hand That Feeds You

“I needed to do something physical and mindless.”
― A.J. Rich, The Hand That Feeds You

“How many sociopaths does it take to change a lightbulb? One. He holds the bulb while the world revolves around him.”
― A.J. Rich, The Hand That Feeds You

“a psychiatrist who wanted to perform psychological autopsies.”
― A.J. Rich, The Hand That Feeds You

“But what if there was a different kind of risk factor, the risk of being too trusting, not because of gullibility, but because of compassion.”
― A.J. Rich, The Hand That Feeds You

“He understood that there was power in stillness, and excitement in the pause.”
― A.J. Rich, The Hand That Feeds You

“And this thought occurred to me: I could neither apologize nor thank him. Despair owned me again.”
― A.J. Rich, The Hand That Feeds You

“You might feel guilty because guilt is more endurable than grief.”
― A.J. Rich, The Hand That Feeds You

“I cannot medicate against grief. Mourning is not an illness.”
― A.J. Rich, The Hand That Feeds You

“Were these rescues a form of pathological altruism? This was the basis of my research, a test to identify victims whose selflessness and hyper-empathy were so extreme that they attracted predators.”
― A.J. Rich, The Hand That Feeds You

“The ice-cream truck played the theme from The Godfather. There was a saying: “It’s not HBO, it’s our neighborhood.”
― A.J. Rich, The Hand That Feeds You

“Does a symbiotic quirk in the brain of the abuser also exist in the emotional makeup of the victim?”
― A.J. Rich, The Hand That Feeds You