Stockholm Syndrome Quotes

“And it's hard to hate someone once you understand them.”
― Lucy Christopher, Stolen

“I've been doing this a long time- manipulating people to get my way. That's why you think you love me. Because I've broken you down and built you back up to believe it. It wasn't an accident. Once you leave this behind..... you'll see that. -Caleb”
― CJ Roberts, Seduced in the Dark

“Politics: the art of using euphemisms, lies, emotionalism and fear-mongering to dupe average people into accepting--or even demanding--their own enslavement.”
― Larken Rose

“In situations of captivity the perpetrator becomes the most powerful person in the life of the victim, and the psychology of the victim is shaped by the actions and beliefs of the perpetrator.”
― Judith Lewis Herman, Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence - From Domestic Abuse to Political Terror

“Distraction serves evil more than any other mental state.”
― Stefan Molyneux

“In 1973, Jan Erik Olsson walked into a small bank in Stockholm, Sweden, brandishing a gun, wounding a police officer, and taking three women and one man hostage. During negotiations, Olsson demanded money, a getaway vehicle, and that his friend Clark Olofsson, a man with a long criminal history, be brought to the bank. The police allowed Olofsson to join his friend and together they held the four hostages captive in a bank vault for six days. During their captivity, the hostages at times were attached to snare traps around their necks, likely to kill them in the event that the police attempted to storm the bank. The hostages grew increasingly afraid and hostile toward the authorities trying to win their release and even actively resisted various rescue attempts. Afterward they refused to testify against their captors, and several continued to stay in contact with the hostage takers, who were sent to prison. Their resistance to outside help and their loyalty toward their captors was puzzling, and psychologists began to study the phenomenon in this and other hostage situations. The expression of positive feelings toward the captor and negative feelings toward those on the outside trying to win their release became known as Stockholm syndrome.”
― Rachel Lloyd

“What makes the difference between a gang and a state is the belief that there is a difference between a gang and a state.”
― Jakub Bożydar Wiśniewski

“I interpreted his heartbeat to be some sort of Morse code for his feelings, but maybe I was imagining substance where there was only air.”
― Megan Farison, Dissonance

“. . . finding the familiarity of captivity more reassuring than the strange call of freedom.”
― Elif Şafak, 10 Minutes 38 Seconds in This Strange World

“This feeling I have... this longing... I don´t want anyone else to know, even her. Especially her. Even now, I want you all to myself.”
― Lucy Christopher, Release

“And you know the cruellest thing? After you´d made me love you more than any of them, you went away anyway. Or they took you away. But you know, Ty, on that final day, I was coming around to what you wanted. I might´ve even stayed with you forever, like you asked for. Does it kill you to know that? That on that day you finally took me to a town and left me at those hospital doors, I felt like an orphan for adoption. A nobody. You were covered in sand and smiling, and I left you to be arrested.”
― Lucy Christopher, Release

“Because this time, you saw me waiting: you found me. And I saw you, too.”
― Lucy Christopher, Release

“You always said that the only art worth anything was made directly from the land, about the land-was the land. You´d never paint a woman who wasn´t me onto your skin.”
― Lucy Christopher, Release

“My fingers fasten around the knife again. "You should be the one thanking me."
And he should be, for allowing him to be anything like you.”
― Lucy Christopher, Release

“If I erase you from my life, what´s left inside? What parts of me remain that are mine alone?”
― Lucy Christopher, Release

“Will I spend my whole life trying to let go of you? Will there never be a time that´s free from you? I bend down and gather sticks, leaves and berries, shaping them into a wreath in the snow, imagining it glowing with candles. I write your name in the centre.
Ty.”
― Lucy Christopher, Release

“Does he want to save me, tip me back from the edge? Or is it simply that, if he can´t understand me, he can´t control me? What is it with men always needing control? He´s not in control of me, and he hated it.”
― Lucy Christopher, Release

“But why do I care about him? He doesn´t see me like you did; he doesn´t care about me. But he is right about one thing: there is something missing.
You took it.
I want it back.”
― Lucy Christopher, Release

“Perhaps my memory of your arid home-of you, even- is also like a painting: a constructed landscape, a vision, but not the real thing. My vision.”
― Lucy Christopher, Release

“I guess there´s no such thing as a true vision; everything is always just a scape.”
― Lucy Christopher, Release

“You´re close now, days away. I feel you in my blood, making my pulse race. Now I can´t imagine a version of my life in which I don´t make up this trip: I´d only ever find a way to return. And why shouldn´t I let you in properly after all this time?”
― Lucy Christopher, Release

“Maybe you were the best thing that ever happened to me-how would I ever know?”
― Lucy Christopher, Release

“I told Ian, "When I think of sexual assault, I think of a child lying in their bed and someone coming into their room at night."

Ian's voice hardened. "I think of a girl being locked in a band room by her teacher.”
― Megan Farison, Dissonance

“One woman reminded me of you. The day she testified, she woke up still wondering whose side she was going to be on.”
― Megan Farison, Dissonance

“Somewhere, buried under the trauma and grief, I must have known—the problem wasn't that Ian didn't love me. The problem was the lens through which I viewed love.”
― Megan Farison, Dissonance

“Memories of Chris were like songs I couldn't get out of my head, a greatest hits album that played in a never ending loop morning, afternoon, and night.”
― Megan Farison, Dissonance

“Something was wrong, and I didn't know how to explain it in a way anyone would understand. It was as if there was an invisible thread between me and Chris, connecting us, and it didn't matter that he was over a thousand miles away in Florida. He was with me everywhere I went, invading my mind and body, stealing the life I could have had.”
― Megan Farison, Dissonance

“Becca hesitated, as if contemplating a move on a chessboard. "Do you know what Stockholm syndrome is?”
― Megan Farison, Dissonance

“Chris's apartment was like a time capsule, and every time I stepped through the door I became one of its many preserved fixtures, reprising my role as the submissive starry-eyed girl, again and again and again.”
― Megan Farison, Dissonance

“We lived separate lives, but I believed wholeheartedly that we shared the same reality.”
― Megan Farison, Dissonance