The Violence Quotes

“You aren’t small. You don’t have to make yourself small. You are allowed to have feelings. You are allowed to experience rage. You are allowed to take up space. You are allowed to be irrational and loud and ugly. You don’t have to make yourself less. Not ever again. You don’t have to play by those rules anymore.”
― Delilah S. Dawson, The Violence

“To the survivors. I used to blame myself for not doing more. For not leaving earlier. For not pushing back. For not fighting him. Now I am kinder to the younger version of me. Now I believe that survival is enough.”
― Delilah S. Dawson, The Violence

“Why is it that when men act out it’s always someone else’s fault?”
― Delilah S. Dawson, The Violence

“Everything is perfect, but nothing is right.”
― Delilah S. Dawson, The Violence

“Never make yourself smaller to suit someone who wants to feel big.”
― Delilah S. Dawson, The Violence

“You shouldn't deny yourself sanity when it's within reach.”
― Delilah S. Dawson, The Violence

“It's monstrous, really, how modern medicine treats people.
Well, poor people.”
― Delilah S. Dawson, The Violence

“Her shame and guilt turn to rage as if she's flicked a switch. Rage is so much easier.”
― Delilah S. Dawson, The Violence

“There probably aren’t any normal families, just families fucked up in different ways.”
― Delilah S. Dawson, The Violence

“We need you strong, not skinny. Muscles and curves are all good here. Never make yourself smaller to suit someone who wants to feel big.”
― Delilah S. Dawson, The Violence

“Funny, how quickly a person grows accustomed to their situation, like an animal in a cage that stops trying to escape.”
― Delilah S. Dawson, The Violence

“Ella usually hates it when people call her honey, that saccharine old man’s reward for being young and female, usually employed around the time someone tells her she should smile more.”
― Delilah S. Dawson, The Violence

“thing about raising kids who have to be the adult in the relationship is that you can’t be surprised when they act like adults.”
― Delilah S. Dawson, The Violence

“was all sandcastles built on the shoreline by someone who’d forgotten that sand was just another kind of dirt.”
― Delilah S. Dawson, The Violence

“The castle became a cage, as castles tend to do.”
― Delilah S. Dawson, The Violence

“It takes a certain kind of person to walk away from a bad situation that's grown comfortable in its constancy.”
― Delilah S. Dawson, The Violence

“She should have done something about him a long time ago, but that's an easy thought when the thing has been done and the fear isn't pressing down like a boot on your neck.”
― Delilah S. Dawson, The Violence

“But in real life, the good boys are all hiding the fact that they’re really bad boys, and no one believes it until it’s too late. That’s why her friend Kaylin got raped by the assistant basketball coach and had to leave school last year. He, of course, is now the head coach. Because there wasn’t any evidence, and when it came down to Kaylin’s word versus everyone else, Kaylin lost. Good basketball coaches are hard to find.”
― Delilah S. Dawson, The Violence

“The cruelties were like that: small and excusable, at first, but then building like snow on branches, slowly but surely weighing them down until they became fragile enough to freeze and crack and break and fall.”
― Delilah S. Dawson, The Violence

“Arlene told her that trauma doesn’t mean you’re broken, doesn’t mean that things will never get better again. That it becomes a part of you, and if you can face it and shake hands with it and find a way to move on together, you’ll always be better off than people who shove theirs down or, weirdly, people who’ve never had trauma at all.”
― Delilah S. Dawson, The Violence

“She sees it now—a long chain of damaged women.”
― Delilah S. Dawson, The Violence

“She gave away something she loved for so little. She hates herself for that, but that version of Chelsea was so young and stupid, and she’s gone now. David choked her to death.”
― Delilah S. Dawson, The Violence

“Because that’s how you become strong,” she whispers. “Confidence is key.”
― Delilah S. Dawson, The Violence

“best way to get rid of enemies is to make them regret ever opposing her in the first place.”
― Delilah S. Dawson, The Violence

“This is how she blesses herself, how she keeps herself together. If everything is in place, if everything is perfect, then she’ll be safe.”
― Delilah S. Dawson, The Violence

“The thing about having nothing is that you have nothing to lose and therefore you don't really give a shit about anything.”
― Delilah S. Dawson, The Violence

“It was all sandcastles built on the shoreline by someone who'd forgotten that sand was just another kind of dirt.”
― Delilah S. Dawson, The Violence

“Everything's been going so well, aside from the constant dread.”
― Delilah S. Dawson, The Violence

“And then they're all laughing the mad giddy laugh of people who live in a world this insane.”
― Delilah S. Dawson, The Violence

“Celebrities pay to stop by the greenroom, and Ella has pics of herself with her mom and Guy Fieri and John Oliver and Nicki Minaj, although not all at once.”
― Delilah S. Dawson, The Violence