My Dark Vanessa Quotes

“I can’t lose the thing I’ve held onto for so long, you know?” My face twists up from the pain of pushing it out. “I just really need it to be a love story, you know? I really, really need it to be that.”
“I know,” she says.
“Because if it isn’t a love story, then what is it”? I look to her glassy eyes, her face of wide open empathy. “It’s my life,” I say. “This has been my whole life.”
― Kate Elizabeth Russell, My Dark Vanessa

“People will risk everything for a little bit of something beautiful.”
― Kate Elizabeth Russell, My Dark Vanessa

“The excuses we make for them are outrageous, but they’re nothing compared with the ones we make for ourselves.”
― Kate Elizabeth Russell, My Dark Vanessa

“Because even if I sometimes use the word abuse to describe certain things that were done to me, in someone else’s mouth the word turns ugly and absolute. It swallows up everything that happened.”
― Kate Elizabeth Russell, My Dark Vanessa

“Somehow I sensed what was coming for me even then. Really, though, what girl doesn’t? It looms over you, that threat of violence. They drill the danger into your head until it starts to feel inevitable. You grow up wondering when it’s finally going to happen.”
― Kate Elizabeth Russell, My Dark Vanessa

“It’s strange to know that whenever I remember myself at fifteen, I’ll think of this.”
― Kate Elizabeth Russell, My Dark Vanessa

“I wonder how much victimhood they’d be willing to grant a girl like me.”
― Kate Elizabeth Russell, My Dark Vanessa

“I need it to be a love story. I need it to be that.”
― Kate Elizabeth Russell, My Dark Vanessa

“Sometimes it feels like that’s all I’m doing every time I reach out—trying to haunt, to drag him back in time, asking him to tell me again what happened. Make me understand it once and for all. Because I’m still stuck here. I can’t move on.”
― Kate Elizabeth Russell, My Dark Vanessa

“To be groomed is to be loved and handled like a precious, delicate thing”
― Kate Elizabeth Russell, My Dark Vanessa

“She didn't understand the horror of watching your body star in something your mind didn't agree to.”
― Kate Elizabeth Russell, My Dark Vanessa

“It's both creepy and out of my control, this ability I have to notice so much about other people when I'm positive no one notices anything at all about me.”
― Kate Elizabeth Russell, My Dark Vanessa

“How much strength does it take to hurt a little girl? How much strength does it take for the girl to get over it? Which one of them do you think is stronger?”
― Kate Elizabeth Russell, My Dark Vanessa

“He touched me first, said he wanted to kiss me, told me he loved me. Every first step was taken by him. I don’t feel forced, and I know I have the power to say no, but that isn’t the same as being in charge. But maybe he has to believe that. Maybe there’s a whole list of things he has to believe.”
― Kate Elizabeth Russell, My Dark Vanessa

“Kneeling before me, he lays his head on my lap and says, ‘I’m going to ruin you.”
― Kate Elizabeth Russell, My Dark Vanessa

“Hide all you want, but the truth will always find you.”
― Kate Elizabeth Russell, My Dark Vanessa

“He's always going to be old. He has to be. That's the only way I can stay young and dripping with beauty.”
― Kate Elizabeth Russell, My Dark Vanessa

“Girls in those stories are always victims, and I am not. And it doesn’t have anything to do with what Strane did or didn’t do to me when I was younger. I’m not a victim because I never wanted to be, and If I didn’t want to be, then I’m not. That’s how it works. The difference between rape and sex is state of mind. You can’t rape the willing, right?”
― Kate Elizabeth Russell, My Dark Vanessa

“He’s the only person who ever understood that desire. Not to die, but to already be dead.”
― Kate Elizabeth Russell, My Dark Vanessa

“I'm a speckled seal swimming past the breakers, a seabird with a wingspan so long I can fly for miles. I'm the new moon, hidden and safe from him, from everyone.”
― Kate Elizabeth Russell, My Dark Vanessa

“There must be a point where you’re allowed to be defined by something other than what he did to you.”
― Kate Elizabeth Russell, My Dark Vanessa

“He wants to make sure he’ll always be there, no matter what. He wants to leave his fingerprints all over me, every piece of muscle and bone.”
― Kate Elizabeth Russell, My Dark Vanessa

“I’m starting to understand that the longer you get away with something, the more reckless you become, until it’s almost as if you want to get caught.”
― Kate Elizabeth Russell, My Dark Vanessa

“An older man using a girl to feel better about himself - how easily the story becomes a cliché if you look at it without the soft focus of romance”
― Kate Elizabeth Russell, My Dark Vanessa

“I don’t say it, but sometimes I feel like that’s exactly what he’s doing to me—breaking me apart, putting me back together as someone new.”
― Kate Elizabeth Russell, My Dark Vanessa

“This, I think, is the cost of telling, even in the guise of fiction. Once you do, it’s the only thing about you anyone will ever care about. It defines you whether you want it to or not.”
― Kate Elizabeth Russell, My Dark Vanessa

“So when a woman chooses victimhood, she is therefore freed from personal responsibility, which then compels others to take care of her, which is why once a woman chooses victimhood, she will continue to choose it again and again.”
― Kate Elizabeth Russell, My Dark Vanessa

“We're born, we live, we die, he says and the choices we make in the middle, all those things we agonize over day after day, none of those matter in the end”
― Kate Elizabeth Russell, My Dark Vanessa

“I’m so fucking tired of this,” I whisper. Ruby’s crouching on the floor in front of me, her hands on my shoulders, the first time she’s ever touched me. “What are you tired of?” she asks. “Hearing him, seeing him, everything I do being laced with him.” We’re quiet. My breathing steadies and she stands, her hands dropping away from me. Gently, she says, “If you think back to the first incident—” “No, I can’t.” I throw my head against the back of the chair, press myself into the cushion. “I can’t go back there.” “You don’t have to go back,” she says. “You can stay in the room. Just think of one moment, the first one between the two of you that could be considered intimate. When you look back on that first memory, who was the initiator, you or him?” She waits, but I can’t say it. Him. He called me up to his desk and touched me while the rest of the class did their homework. I sat beside him, stared out the window, and let him do what he wanted. And I didn’t understand it, didn’t ask for it. I exhale, hang my head. “I can’t.” “That’s fine,” she says. “Take it slow.” “I just feel . . .” I press the heels of my hands into my thighs. “I can’t lose the thing I’ve held on to for so long. You know?” My face twists up from the pain of pushing it out. “I just really need it to be a love story. You know? I really, really need it to be that.” “I know,” she says. “Because if it isn’t a love story, then what is it?” I look to her glassy eyes, her face of wide-open empathy. “It’s my life,” I say. “This has been my whole life.” She stands over me as I say I’m sad, I’m so sad, small, simple words, the only ones that make sense as I clutch my chest like a child and point to where it hurts.”
― Kate Elizabeth Russell, My Dark Vanessa

“I´m so sad, small, simple words, the only ones that make sense as I clutch my chest like a child and point to where it hurts.”
― Kate Elizabeth Russell, My Dark Vanessa