Member of the Family Quotes

“Memories fade, but trauma remembers. It is stored in your body, your senses, your synapses and cells.”
― Dianne Lake, Member of the Family: My Story of Charles Manson, Life Inside His Cult, and the Darkness That Ended the Sixties

“Memories fade, but trauma remembers. It is stored in your body, your senses, your synapses and cells. It would take strength to tell my story, but more importantly, it would take strength to tell myself, and to remember.”
― Dianne Lake, Member of the Family: My Story of Charles Manson, Life Inside His Cult, and the Darkness That Ended the Sixties

“Charlie’s uncanny ability to access a person’s needs now has many labels such as a type of cognitive empathy, this ability to read others and know them better than they know themselves without the emotional empathy to go along with it. Charlie provided scientists with a prime example of this type of pathology.”
― Dianne Lake, Member of the Family: My Story of Charles Manson, Life Inside His Cult, and the Darkness That Ended the Sixties

“As I discovered that first day in his magic bus, when he focused his attention on you, he made you believe there was no one else in the world. He also had the uncanny sensibility bestowed upon mystics, yet misused by sociopaths and con men, to know exactly what you needed. Charlie knew what you were afraid of, and could paint a scenario that would use all those insights to his advantage—traits that I would see in equal parts over time.”
― Dianne Lake, Member of the Family: My Story of Charles Manson, Life Inside His Cult, and the Darkness That Ended the Sixties

“Playing dumb was actually one of Charlie’s most regular acts, because it made people underestimate him.”
― Dianne Lake, Member of the Family: My Story of Charles Manson, Life Inside His Cult, and the Darkness That Ended the Sixties

“From early on, parts of Charlie’s speeches were devoted to using fear about African Americans, a term that came into common use only in the late 1970s and official use in the 1980s, to support his prejudiced view of the world. His ideas would grow more extreme over time, but even in the beginning, he was indoctrinating us to believe that black people were going to rise up collectively against white people. While he wasn’t necessarily framing it as an armed conflict initially, he talked to us in the Family about the blacks and whites and the coming insurrection. As he told it, he had been in jail with black people, and this was something he had heard from them.”
― Dianne Lake, Member of the Family: My Story of Charles Manson, Life Inside His Cult, and the Darkness That Ended the Sixties

“A wise old pimp gave him the three secrets to keeping women loyal and malleable. Charlie used these as the foundation of everything he did following his release from Terminal Island in March of 1967. The first was to use fear and intimidation, but that didn’t always work. The next was becoming the greatest lover in the girl’s life—satisfying her like no one else can. The final and most important was making the girl feel fully loved.”
― Dianne Lake, Member of the Family: My Story of Charles Manson, Life Inside His Cult, and the Darkness That Ended the Sixties

“You know, man, you got your father in you. He took over your mind, and that’s why you don’t believe in your own music.” Dennis was visibly shaken with Charlie’s insight. “You got to give up all that. That’s nothing but a reflection in the wrong mirror.”
― Dianne Lake, Member of the Family: My Story of Charles Manson, Life Inside His Cult, and the Darkness That Ended the Sixties

“Young loves, your ego is what your parents made you. Your ego is what society taught you. Your ego is anything you acquired after your birth because at your birth you were a perfect person, no hang-ups just innocence. Now your ego is all the things that you fight against and are afraid of. But there is nothing to fear. You can free yourselves from this ego prison through love.”
― Dianne Lake, Member of the Family: My Story of Charles Manson, Life Inside His Cult, and the Darkness That Ended the Sixties