This above all, to refuse to be a victim. Unless I can do that I can do nothing.

I don't wanna be a lover,
I just wanna be your victim.

If I’m in the GAP, I become a tyrant and a bully to my son, rather than his biggest fan and supporter.

The victim who is able to articulate the situation of the victim has ceased to be a victim: he or she has become a threat.

I always wanted to be a bad influence.

It is not virtuous to be victimized by a bully, even if that bully is oneself.

I needed to stop being victimized by my own weaknesses and insecurities about other people,

Casting yourself as a victim is the antithesis of doing your work. Don't do it. If you're doing it, stop.

I do not ask the wounded person how he feels, I myself become the wounded person.

I learned that to humiliate another person is to make him suffer an unnecessarily cruel fate. Even as a boy, I defeated my opponents without dishonoring them.

The whole question here is: am I a monster, or a victim myself?

After my book Wanderlust came out in 2000, I found myself better able to resist being bullied out of my own perceptions and interpretations. On two occasions around that time, I objected to the behavior of a man, only to be told that the incidents hadn't happened at all as I said, that I was subjective, delusional, overwrought, dishonest- in a nutshell, female.

It took me a long time, but I prefer “victim” to “survivor” now. I don’t want to diminish the gravity of what happened. I don’t want to pretend I’m on some triumphant, uplifting journey. I don’t want to pretend that everything is okay. I’m living with what happened, moving forward without forgetting, moving forward without pretending I am unscarred.

The bully and the victim never quite forget their first relations.