103 Secret Quotes

In a world filled with noise and constant information, there's something profoundly intriguing about secrets. They carry an air of mystery and evoke a sense of curiosity that makes us want to unravel them. Quotes about secrets often capture this enigmatic allure, offering insights that range from the playful to the profound. Whether you're seeking inspiration, a touch of wisdom, or simply the thrill of the unknown, our carefully curated collection of the top 103 secret quotes promises to engage and surprise you. Dive in and explore the whispers of insight that lie within each quote.

1. “I never understood why Clark Kent was so hell bent on keeping Lois Lane in the dark.” - Audrey Niffenegger

2. “Three may keep a secret, if two of them are dead.” - Benjamin Franklin

3. “She said she never wanted to have secrets from me nor from herself, which is why she wanted to write down everything that otherwise would be hard to talk about. As I said, later I understood that someone who flees into honesty like that fears something, fears that her life will fill with something that can no longer be shared, a genuine secret, indescribable, unutterable.” - Sándor Márai

4. “We priests are the surgeons of souls, and it is our duty to deliver them of shameful secrets they would fain conceal, with hands careful to neither wound no pollute.” - Jules Barbey d'Aurevilly

5. “Literature, like magic, has always been about the handling of secrets, about the pain, the destruction, and the marvelous liberation that can result when they are revealed. Telling the truth when the truth matters most is almost always a frightening prospect. If a writer doesn't give away secrets, his own or those of the people he loves; if she doesn't court disapproval, reproach, and general wrath, whether of friends, family, or party apparatchiks; if the writer submits his work to an internal censor long before anyone else can get their hands on it, the result is pallid, inanimate, a lump of earth.” - Michael Chabon

6. “Some secrets are like fossils and the stone has become too heavy to turn over.” - Delphine de Vigan

7. “Maybe all of us at Hailsam had little secrets like that -- little private nooks created out of thin air where we could go off alone without fears and longing.” - Kazuo Ishiguro

8. “There is something about a closet that makes a skeleton terribly restless.” - John Barrymore Jr.

9. “Secrets could never be rushed. They had to come of their own accord, on their own schedule. That way ,when they came , the offered themselves as a gift.” - Donna Jo Napoli

10. “Nothing Stays Secret Forever” - Jennifer R. Hubbard

11. “That's how I do this life sometimes by making the ordinary just like magic and just like a card trick and just like a mirror and just like the disappearing. Every Indian learns how to be a magician and learns how to misdirect attention and the dark hand is always quicker than the white eye and no matter how close you get to my heart you will never find out my secrets and I'll never tell you and I'll never show you the same trick twice. I'm traveling heavy with illusions.” - Sherman Alexie

12. “Secrets are like plants. They can stay buried deep in the earth for a long time, but eventually they'll send up shoots and give themselves away. They have to. It's their nature. Just a tiny green stem at first. Which slowly, insidiously grows taller, stronger, unfolding itself, until there it is. A big fat secret, right in front of your face; a fully bloomed flower perfumed with the scent of deception.” - Judy Reene Singer

13. “And what if we’d been utterly open? Made jokes about the first wife? What if we’d been that kind of family? Well, I would have been different, surely. But not because I knew the secret. For it wasn’t the secret—the secret that wasn’t a secret anyway—that led to the austerity in our lives. It was the austerity that led to the secret. And what I had been marked by, probably most of all, was the austerity. It had made secrets in my life too. Or silences, anyway, that became secrets. That became lies. ” - Sue Miller

14. “And then heard Detective Ryan’s pleased voice talking about Eli, about killers who’ve gone free: “They have to tell,” he’d saidWell, apparently so.But why? What is it that comes from the telling?Some of it must be relief, of course. A secret weighs on us, a terrible secret weighs with a terrible weight.It seems as we need someone to know us as we are—with all we have done—and forgive us. We need to tell. We need to be whole in someone’s sight: Know this about me, and yet love me. Please” - Sue Miller

15. “How hollow to have no secrets left; you shake yourself and nothing rattles. You're boneless as an anemone.” - Andrew Sean Greer

16. “How remarkable we are in our ability to hide things from ourselves - our conscious minds only a small portion of our actual minds, jellyfish floating on a vast dark sea of knowing and deciding.” - Andrew Sean Greer

17. “When women are secret they are secret indeed; and more often then not they only begin to be secret with the advent of a second lover.” - Thomas Hardy

18. “He'd kept this silence because his own secrets were darker, more hidden, and because he believed that his secrets had created hers.” - Kim Edwards

19. “So he was queer, E.M. Forster. It wasn't his middle name (that would be 'Morgan'), but it was his orientation, his romping pleasure, his half-secret, his romantic passion. In the long-suppressed novel Maurice the title character blurts out his truth, 'I'm an unspeakable of the Oscar Wilde sort.' It must have felt that way when Forster came of sexual age in the last years of the 19th century: seriously risky and dangerously blurt-able. The public cry had caught Wilde, exposed and arrested him, broken him in prison. He was one face of anxiety to Forster; his mother was another. As long as she lived (and they lived together until she died, when he was 66), he couldn't let her know.” - Michael Levenson

20. “The hell with your secrets,” shouted Bonnie.“Language, language! How about this: One of you has kept a secret alltheir life, and is doing so even now. One of you is a murderer—and I amnot speaking of a vampire, or a mercy killing, or anything like that. Andthen there is the question of the true identity of Sage—good luck on yourresearch there!One of you has already had their memory erased—and I don’t meanDamon or Stefan. And what about the secret, stolen kiss? And then there isthe question of what happened the night of the motel, that it seems that nobodybut Elena can recall. You might ask her sometime about her theories aboutCamelot.” - L.J. Smith

21. “It was the shadow of Some one who had gone by long before: of Some one who had gone on far away quite out of reach, never, never to come back. It was bright to look at; and when the tiny woman showed it to the Princess, she was proud of it with all her heart, as a great, great, treasure. When the Princess had considered it a little while, she said to the tiny woman, And you keep watch over this, every day? And she cast down her eyes, and whispered, Yes. Then the Princess said, Remind me why. To which the other replied, that no one so good and so kind had ever passed that way, and that was why in the beginning. She said, too, that nobody missed it, that nobody was the worse for it, that Some one had gone on to those who were expecting him-- 'Some one was a man then?' interposed Maggy. Little Dorrit timidly said yes, she believed so; and resumed:'-- Had gone on to those who were expecting him, and that this remembrance was stolen or kept back from nobody. The Princess made answer, Ah! But when the cottager died it would be discovered there. The tiny woman told her No; when that time came, it would sink quietly into her own grave, and would never be found.” - Charles Dickens

22. “But the aspect of secrets is they leak out. If they didn't leak, they wouldn't be interesting.” - Clamp

23. “All families have their secrets, most people would never know them, but they know there are spaces, gaps where the answers should be, where someone should have sat, where someone used to be. A name that is never uttered, or uttered just once and never again. We all have our secrets.” - Cecelia Ahern

24. “I would have had to kill him, and Death, you know, keeps secrets better even than a guilty Roman.” - Lew Wallace

25. “The number of family secrets is just staggering.” - Jill A. Davis

26. “Everybody sees me as this sullen and insecure little thing. Those are just the sides of me that I feel necessary to show because no one else seems to be showing them.” - Fiona Apple

27. “There are two kinds of secrets. The ones we keep from others and the ones we keep from ourselves.” - Frank Warren

28. “From infancy on, we are all spies; the shame is not this but that the secrets to be discovered are so paltry and few. ” - John Updike

29. “What happened?" Bailey asks."That is somewhat difficult to explain," Tsukiko answers. "It is a long and complicated story.""And you're not going to tell me, are you?"She tilts her head a bit ... "No, I am not," she says."Great," Bailey mutters under his breath... "The bonfire exploded? How?""Remember when I said it was difficult to explain? That has not changed.” - Erin Morgenstern

30. “Six weeks is a long time to wait, and a still longer time for a girl to keep a secret…” - Louisa May Alcott

31. “Theatres are curious places, magician's trick-boxes where the golden memories of dramtic triumphs linger like nostalgic ghosts, and where the unexplainable, the fantastic, the tragic, the comic and the absurd are routine occurences on and off the stage. Murders, mayhem, politcal intrigue, lucrative business, secret assignations, and of course, dinner.” - E.A. Bucchianeri

32. “To know a man’s secrets is to discover his weakness, and thus control his will” - Jeremy Aldana

33. “A man’s spirit is free, but his pride binds him with chains of suffocation in a prison of his own insecurities” - Jeremy Aldana

34. “He was afraid that the secrets she'd kept would always be here, inside him, an ugly malignant thing lodged near enough to his heart to upset its rhythm, and though it could be removed, cut out, there would always be scars; bits and pieces of it would remain in his blood, making it wrong somehow, so that if he accidentally sliced his skin open, his blood would--for one heartbeat--flow as black as India ink before it remembered that it should be red.” - Kristin Hannah

35. “If I maintain my silence about my secret it is my prisoner...if I let it slip from my tongue, I am ITS prisoner.” - Arthur Schopenhauer

36. “Lying in bed, half-covered by the blankets, I would drowsily ask why he had come to my door that night long ago. It had become a ritual for us, as it does for all lovers: where, when, why? remember...I understand even old people rehearse their private religion of how they first loved, most guarded of secrets. And he would answer, sleep blurring his words, "Because I had to." The question and the answer were always the same. Why? Because I had to.” - Margaret George

37. “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

38. “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

39. “I know a secret,and secrets breed paranoia.” - Simon Holt

40. “The story of my family. . .changes with the teller.” - Jennifer Haigh

41. “She was flushed and felt intoxicated with the sound of her own voice and the unaccustomed taste of candor. It muddled her like wine, or like a first breath of freedom.” - Kate Chopin

42. “You have two kinds of secrets. The ones only you know. The ones only you don't.” - James Richardson

43. “Never hide things from hardcore thinkers. They get more aggravated, more provoked by confusion than the most painful truths.” - Criss Jami

44. “We always hate people who surprise our secrets…” - L.M. Montgomery

45. “Consider the coincidences that you do not see." - Fabian Snowstrom, A Vampire's Reckoning” - V.M.K. Fewings

46. “Ah well that I can't tell you." Diana ducked her head so that the brim of her bonnet covered her face. "Some things must remain a mystery and for now I think I'll keep my opinion of you and your compliments to myself.” - Anna Godbersen

47. “Very strange things comes to our knowledge in families, miss; bless your heart, what you would think to be phenomenons, quite ... Aye, and even in gen-teel families, in high families, in great families ... and you have no idea ... what games goes on!” - Charles Dickens

48. “There are so many movies like this, where you thought you were smarter than the screen but the director was smarter than you, of course he's the one, of course it was a dream, of course she's dead, of course, it's hidden right there, of course it's the truth and you in your seat have failed to notice in the dark.” - Daniel Handler

49. “Secrets. Everyone has them. The light of day and truth reveal some secrets to be nagging obsessions or habits, while other secrets may be as incriminating as a literal decaying skeleton in one’s closet.” - Kenn Bivins

50. “I never lie," I said offhand. "At least not to those I don't love.” - Anne Rice

51. “It was at thirteen years old that Marya Morevna learned how to keep a secret, and that secrets are jealous things, permitting no fraternization.” - Catherynne M. Valente

52. “Sir Henry fixed him with a keen eye.'Odd name, Tom Skatt - eh?''Thats right''You don't think we could be related?'Tom looked up at his great-great-great-uncle and smiled.'I don't think so''No,' grinned Sir Henry "no, of course not” - Henry Chancellor

53. “There is nothing in this world that never takes a step outside a person's heart.” - Haruki Murakami

54. “And as for the vague something --- was it a sinister or a sorrowful, a designing or a desponding expression? --- that opened upon a careful observer, now and then, in his eye, and closed again before one could fathom the strange depth partially disclosed; that something which used to make me fear and shrink, as if I had been wandering amongst volcanic-looking hills, and had suddenly felt the ground quiver, and seen it gape: that something, I, at intervals, beheld still; and with throbbing heart, but not with palsied nerves. Instead of wishing to shun, I longed only to dare --- to divine it; and I thought Miss Ingram happy, because one day she might look into the abyss at her leisure, explore its secrets and analyse their nature.” - Charlotte Brontë

55. “I feel bare. I didn't realize I wore my secrets as armor until they were gone and now everyone sees me as I really am.” - Veronica Roth

56. “I do not tell her about how much I look forward to going to the Wright barn. How those couple of hours in his studio feel like an escape, a refuge. Nor do I tell Rachel that I think Damian has the most beautiful hands I've ever seen, that he walks like a cat, that he has the clearest eyes, which seem able to see absolutely everything about me. That he seems to be the loneliest person I've ever met, and it breaks my heart. All of these things feel private. Precious. And I don't want to share them with Rachel. Not yet, anyway.” - Lisa Ann Sandell

57. “You are trying to lure us into revealing information you're not entitled to? With chocolate and wine? Are you amateurs?” - Moira J. Moore

58. “Every woman needs secrets,' her mother said with a smile then, her eyes meeting Sally's in the rearview mirror. 'Remember that when you're old like me, pumpkin, because the world has a way of making a woman's life everyone else's business--you have to dig out a little place that's only yours.” - J. Courtney Sullivan

59. “It's not the substance of what you make known to me that's beautiful; it's the opening of your heart. It is the 'yes' in your heart to be mine. The fact that you are revealing the secrets and letting me peer into your heart--that is in itself the beautiful part.” - Dana Candler

60. “The real secrets are not the ones I tell.” - Mason Cooley

61. “Children who are victimized through sexual abuse often begin to develop deeply held tenets that shape their sense of self: 'My worth is my sexuality. I'm dirty and shameful. I have no right to my own physical boundaries.' That shapes their ideas about the world around them: 'No one will believe me. Telling the truth results in bad consequences. People can't be trusted.' It doesn't take long for children to being to act in accordance with these belief systems.For girls who have experienced incest, sexual abuse, or rape, the boundaries between love, sex, and pain become blurred. Secrets are normal, and shame is a constant.” - Rachel Lloyd

62. “A real secret is something which only one person knows.” - Idries Shah

63. “I used to want to understand how the world worked. Little things, like heavy stuff goes at the bottom of the laundry bag, or big things, like the best way to get a boy to chase you is to ignore him, or medium things, like if you cut an onion under running water your eyes won't sting, and if you wash your fingers afterwards with lemon-juice they won't stink.I used to want to know all the secrets, and every time I learned one, I felt like I'd taken--a step. On a journey. To a place. A destination: to be the kind of person who knew all this stuff, the way everyone around me seemed to know all this stuff. I thought that once I knew enough secrets, I'd be like them.” - Cory Doctorow

64. “What are we going to do, Ayden?" she whispered, glaring up at me."I don't know," I confessed. "But how about we burn that bridge when we get there?""I thought it was 'cross' that bridge?"I lightly poked her in the eye and she laughed. "No. We're burning bridges. Crossing is so overrated." I smiled and touched the corner of her eyes, captivated by the iridescent blues."I think I like the sound of that," she whispered."Yeah?""Yeah.” - Nadège Richards

65. “For it wasn't the secret--the secret that wasn't a secret anyway--that led to austerity in our lives. It was the austerity that led to the secret. And what I had been marked by, probably most of all, was the austerity. It had made secrets in my life too. Or silences, anyway, that became secrets. That became lies.” - Sue Miller

66. “Baxter knows a lot more than I do, I told her.Yes, said Baxter, but I will never tell people all of it.” - Alasdair Gray

67. “They didn't just live with secrets. Secrecy surrounded their entire lives.” - Anthony Horowitz

68. “I'm scared, all right?" I said. I could feel my stomach churn as my gaze rested on the wooden trunk.Nathan turned my chin, looking at me with an expression of utter sincerity. "You don't have to be. I'm here.” - Markelle Grabo

69. “Then, idly scratching his nose, he walks to the bookcase in the living room and stoops before a set of drab brown Victorian volumes gathering dust on the second shelf from the bottom. How amusing, he thinks, as he withdraws one of them-amusing that a key to dark and ancient rites should survive in such innocuous-looking form.A young fool like Freirs would probably refuse to believe it. Like the rest of his doomed kind, he'd probably expect such lore to be found only in ancient leather-bound tomes with gothic lettering and portentously sinister titles. He'd search for it in mysterious old trunks and private vaults, in the "restricted" sections of libraries, in intricately carved wood chests with secret compartments.But there are no real secrets, the Old One knows. Secrets are ultimately too hard to conceal. The keys to the rites that will transform the world are neither hidden nor rare nor expensive. They are available to anyone. You can find them on the paperback racks or in any second-hand bookshop.” - T.E.D. Klein

70. “I now understood that real secrets were lonely. They planted themselves inside of you and expanded, until you felt like that was all you were-a lonely little secret, isolated in your experiences.” - Yvonne Woon

71. “I walk out the door with a heavy feeling in my heart as another secret falls on top of it.” - Jessica Sorensen

72. “Fame is a funny thing, like a secret, both are hard to keep.” - Richard Peck

73. “He had been driven hither by the impulse of that Remorse which dogged him everywhere, and whose own sister and closely linked companion was that Cowardice which invariably drew him back, with her tremulous gripe, just when the other impulse had hurried him to the verge of a disclosure.” - Nathaniel Hawthorne

74. “That's the thing about flying: You could talk to someone for hours and never even know his name, share your deepest secrets and then never see them again.” - Jennifer E. Smith

75. “I hope to turn my reader into the quiet person in the corner who, even when no one is telling them anything, sees everything.” - damali ayo

76. “I'm an expert at finding out secrets, but keeping them- especially a secret of this magnitude - is something else.” - Hannah Harrington

77. “The knowledge of secrets is a very enticing ship, a very tempting voyage, and one thinks that the highest attainment in life is to find out hidden truths, to seek out what is truth, to know what are all lies; to uncover, to discover and to rediscover, to dig up, to expose, to reveal... But secrets can go on forever, for an eternity! For as vast as the universe is, so are the secrets therein! And one can lose, because of that thought that in the secrets, everything is to be gained! But I can see, that all the knowledge of hidden things, all the knowledge in the universe, is not nearly as valuable and as worthy as the innocence of one's soul. And we are not directed unto good things through our ability to scavenge or to hunt or to decipher or to sail! Or to fly! But we are directed unto good things, through sovereign providence! He is more worthy- the innocent soul who has a simple faith in what he believes in- than the one who has found out all the dark secrets about what the other man has put his faith in! And it is far more profitable for a man to be healthy, to have a long, long life, loved ones that are blessed with these blessings all the same, much love and happiness and safety! It is far more profitable for a man to be able to remain innocent and have love and be healthy and to be able to watch his loved ones in good health and in good love, than for a man to uncover all the secrets of the universe! A single love, a single faith, a single trust, and one hope- these are far, far better things to aspire to have! And this– this is the biggest secret!” - C. JoyBell C.

78. “Yes, women have always had secrets and always will. I'm afraid men would be very distressed to learn what their darlings were thinking. Frankly, I don't think men are strong enough to bear the shock.” - Carol K. Carr

79. “I want something good to die for. . . to make it beautiful to live.” - Stacey T. Hunt

80. “What good is a secret if it remains a secret ... Secrets are meant to be discovered...” - Jocelyn Murray

81. “Las Vegas. Madhali umeona tunafanya nini katika maisha, fumba macho kwa kuyakodoa. Wanaosema hawajui wanaojua hawasemi. Siri ni siri milele. Kinachofanyika hapa hubakia hapa.” - Enock Maregesi

82. “I want you to remember what was good in me, not what was most awful. The people you love should be allowed to keep their worst to themselves.” - Joe Hill

83. “And so the game went on in this manner, a throng of children playing keep-away from a bowling ball tossed back and forth between two plump ogres. The air filled with shrieks and cheers and shouts of laughter as daring players thrilled at the sport. That is, all but the few poor souls knocked flat and captured. No laughter rose from behind bars because those in the birdcage knew what was in store. They would soon be lunch for a couple of hungry ogres. Now you might be thinking—didn’t Gavin call it fun when he was swallowed by a wolf earlier? And didn’t he tell that raven-haired girl it doesn’t hurt to be swallowed whole by a bear? All true, all true. But here’s a secret you might not know. Ogres chew their food. Luckily, it’s only the first bite that stings.” - Richelle E. Goodrich

84. “Son, I hope your opinion of your mother hasn’t lessened, knowing what you now know.” Gavin glanced up; incredulity skewed his eyebrows. His expression appeared both stunned and appalled. “Never, Father! I love her! It makes no difference to me where she came from.” The man nodded, a show of relief in his features. His large hand, soft in touch, went to brush a string of hair away from his wife’s peaceful profile. “Your mother loves you too, son, more than anything in the world. She worries about you, day and night.” That sentiment stirred something profoundly pleasant inside the boy. He grinned at the internal warmth it created.” - Richelle E. Goodrich

85. “I take pleasure in my transformations. I look quiet and consistent, but few know how many women there are in me.” - Anais Nin

86. “I think about pressing myself against him, but I can't, because all our secrets would keep a space between us.” - Veronica Roth

87. “Entre as recordações de cada pessoa, há coisas que ela não conta para qualquer um, somente para os amigos. Há também aquelas que ela não conta nem para os amigos, somente para sim mesma, e isso secretamente. Mas, finalmente, há também aquelas que o indivíduo tem medo de revelar até para si mesmo, e um homem respeitável tem tais coisas acumuladas em grande quantidade. E pode ser assim mesmo: quanto mais respeitável ele é, mais coisas desse tipo ele tem acumuladas. Eu, pelo menos, só recentemente tomei coragem para recordar algumas das minhas aventuras passadas, as quais até agora tinha evitado com uma certa inquietação. E agora, quando não só recordei, como até me decidi a escrevê-las, agora exatamente quero tirar a prova: é possível alguém ser inteiramente sincero consigo mesmo e não temer toda a verdade? A propósito: Heine afirma que é quase impossível existirem autobiografias sinceras, porque na certa o ser humano mentirá, falando de si mesmo. Na opinião dele, por exemplo, Rousseau sem dúvida mentiu sobre si mesmo em suas 'Confissões' e fez isso até deliberadamente, por vaidade. Estou convencido de que Heine está certo; entendo perfeitamente como, às vezes, alguém pode confessar uma série de crimes por pura vaidade e percebo até muito bem de que tipo pode ser essa vaidade.” - Fiodor Dostoievski

88. “My name is Cammie!” I didn’t think about all the people I could have woken, all the alarms that might have gone off. I just snapped, “How did you know about Boston? Why are you working with Mr. Solomon now? Are you my friend or are you my enemy, Zach? Or, wait, let me guess, you can’t tell me.” - Ally Carter

89. “La madrugada es la mejor aliada de un secreto” - Alessandra Neymar

90. “It was almost comforting, this mutual acceptance of our secrets.” - Kiera Cass

91. “It turns out that when there is some conspicuous gap or contradiction at the center of someone's existence, there is probably a very specific, obvious reason for it, and the reason you're avoiding confronting it directly is that it's something you don't want to know.” - Tim Kreider

92. “What happens in the dark should not be brought to light.” - Habeeb Akande

93. “He leaned toward me and said his name like he was sharing a secret and it made me think he probably kept a lot of secrets. His smile was sweet and his teeth the tiniest bit crooked.” - Laura Anderson Kurk

94. “Those who support such survivors of abuse often find it difficult to hear the reality of those survivors' lives and experience and are often unsupported themselves. Rather than being supported, workers are often ridiculed, castigated or accused of being gullible or of giving the survivor false memories. Many workers work in isolation and a climate of hostility and are unable to talk about the work they do.Yes, despite all the odds, survivors of ritual abuse are beginning to speak out about their experiences, and some people, mainly in voluntary organisations, are beginning to listen to them and support them.[Published 2001]” - Laurie Matthew

95. “Some abusers organise themselves in groups to abuse children and other adults in a more formally ritualised way. Men and women in these groups can be abusers with both sexes involved in all aspects of the abuse. Children are often forced to abuse other children. Pornography and prostitution are sometimes part of the abuse as is the use of drugs, hypnotism and mind control. Some groups use complex rituals to terrify, silence and convince victims of the tremendous power of the abusers. the purpose is to gain and maintain power over the child in order to exploit. Some groups are so highly organised that they also have links internationally through trade in child-pornography, drugs and arms.Some abusers organise themselves around a religion or faith and the teaching and training of the children within this faith, often takes the form of severe and sustained torture and abuse. Whether or not the adults within this type of group believe that what they are doing is, in some way 'right' is immaterial to the child on the receiving end of the 'teachings' and abuse.” - Laurie Matthew

96. “In a nutshell, the process they [abusers in a ritual abuse group] use on survivors is designed to:break the will and personality of the person until they become as nothing... with no will of their own...no identity...then they... rebuild the person & shape their will in order to...try and make the person one of them...thus gaining powerIf abusers hold all the power, becoming one of them can, for some, be the only means of survival. However, this doesn't always work, instead survivors often find ways of regaining their own power and fighting back.” - Laurie Matthew

97. “Political prisoners describe:- extreme physical and emotional torture- distortion of language, truth, meaning and reality- sham killings- begin repeatedly taken to the point of death or threatened with death- being forced to witness abusive acts on others- being forced to make impossible "choices"- boundaries smashed i.e. by the use of forced nakedness, shame, embarrassment- hoaxes, 'set ups', testing and tricks- being forced to hurt othersRitual abuse survivors often describe much the same things.” - Laurie Matthew

98. “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

99. “No matter how grave the secret, how imperative absolute silence, someone would always feel the urge to confess, and an unleashed secret is a terrible force.” - Téa Obreht

100. “Sometimes it's the smallest secrets that hold the most hope, the most fun, the most danger.” - Suzanne Palmieri

101. “Self redemption is the first step to exoneration from guilt.” - Dennis E. Adonis

102. “When I look in the mirror, I see a woman with secrets. When we don’t listen to our intuition, we abandon our souls. And we abandon our souls because we are afraid if we don’t, others will abandon us.” - Terry Tempest Williams

103. “What would you do if you saw something nobody else could see?”The tape gun fell out of Luke’s hand, and hit the tiled hearth. He knelt to pick it up, not looking at her. “You mean if I were the only witness to a crime, that sort of thing?”“No. I mean, if there were other people around, but you were the only one who could see something. As if it were invisible to everyone but you.”He hesitated, still kneeling, the dented tape gun gripped in his hand.“I know it sounds crazy,” Clary ventured nervously, “but…”He turned around. His eyes, very blue behind the glasses, rested on her with a look of firm affection. “Clary, you’re an artist, like your mother. That means you see the world in ways that other people don’t. It’s your gift, to see the beauty and the horror in ordinary things. It doesn’t make you crazy—just different. There’s nothing wrong with being different.” - Cassandra Clare