#secrets

For its survival, the satanic cult demanded secrecy and obedience while it made brutality, even killing, appropriate. Denial and disavowal were inevitable responses to required behaviors so bizarre as to seem unreal, even to those who enacted them. What they could not deny or disavow, they could distort. They could blame the victims, who deserved to die for fighting or crying or for failing to fight or cry. They found encouragement for such a stance in a general culture accustomed to blaming victims for their misfortunes, and in specific contact with child victims eager to blame themselves. By believing that victims had a choice when there was none, they could see victims as culpable. They could even see the deaths as right and purposeful in the nobility of sacrifice. ↗

— Judith Spencer

#cult #denial #evil #evil-men #human-sacrifice

In some counties, there is an actual named crime of ritual abuse and there too, there have been convictions. ↗

— Laurie Matthew

#child-abuse #childabuse #childhood-abuse #crime #death

I never understood why Clark Kent was so hell bent on keeping Lois Lane in the dark. ↗

— Audrey Niffenegger

#trust #travel

A secret's worth depends on the people from whom it must be kept. ↗

— Carlos Ruiz Zafón

#secret

What someone’s lies reveal about them (aspirations to being an accomplished writer, fantasies of an exotic history and a cosmopolitan family) are always sadder than the fact of the lies themselves. These inventions illuminate the negative spaces of someone’s self-image, their vanity and insecurities and most childish wishes, as we can infer from warped starlight the presence of a far vaster mass of dark matter. ↗

— Tim Kreider

#personality #secrets #family

There is no friendship that cares about an overheard secret. ↗

— Alexandre Dumas

#gossip #secrets #friendship

Sharing secrets is the way in which women tie themselves together, for it reveals complicity and trust. Holding secrets shows trustworthiness and a sort of quite defiance. It is a natural thing for a female to hold secrets within her breast until the time is ripe to release them. Does it not follow the way in which her body is formed? A woman is made with that dark and mysterious recess that can grow a child safely until the child is ready to come out onto the birthing bed. And like birthing, secrets present themselves in many ways. some slip easily into the world, others must be torn out, if the body is unwilling. ↗

— Kathleen Kent

#secrets #trust #women #friendship

The best secrets are the most twisted ↗

— Sara Shepard

#secrets #life

He had two lives: one, open, seen and known by all who cared to know, full of relative truth and of relative falsehood, exactly like the lives of his friends and acquaintances; and another life running its course in secret. And through some strange, perhaps accidental, conjunction of circumstances, everything that was essential, of interest and of value to him, everything in which he was sincere and did not deceive himself, everything that made the kernel of his life, was hidden from other people. ↗

— Anton Chekhov

#life

Science of happiness lies in our understanding. The secrets of happiness lie in our capacity to expand our heart. ↗

— Amit Ray

#science-of-happiness #secrets-of-happiness #life