A Quote by Andre Dubus
As a young victim of bullying and then, later, a vindictive perpetrator of violence myself, I've known both sides of this experience, and I tried very hard in the writing here to be as absolutely honest as I possibly could, to not romanticize myself or my past actions or cowardly inactions in any way.
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If no one remembers a misdeed or names it publically, it remains invisible. To the observer, its victim is not a victim and its perpetrator is not a perpetrator; both are misperceived because the suffering of the one and the violence of the other go unseen. A double injustice occurs-the first when the original deed is done and the second when it disappears.
I don't view myself as a victim of gun violence. I view myself as a victim of a maniac who happened to use a gun as a tool, and I view myself as a victim of the legislators at the time who left me defenseless.
I decided upon the thought that I can only find myself once I can admit to myself and approve that both sides are sides of myself.
D.H. Lawrence, I think, defined the difference between writing an article and writing a novel very well. He said, in writing a novel, the writer must be able to identify emotionally and intellectually with two or three or four contradicting perspectives and give each of them very a convincing voice. It's like playing tennis with yourself and you have to be on both sides of the yard. You have to be on both sides, or all sides if there are more than two sides.
I would do a sort of violence to myself if I didn't express myself in the directly creative ways of writing, both words and music.
I don't feel real confident expressing myself except when I'm writing. I feel kind of scatterbrained. I can see everything from both sides and that makes it hard to reach conclusions. Writing enables me to clarify things.
The fact is, violence is not only not a beautiful thing, but it's also very painful and not without consequences for the perpetrator as well as the victim.
It is very tempting to take the side of the perpetrator. All the perpetrator asks is that the bystander do nothing. He appeals to the universal desire to see, hear, and speak no evil. The victim, on the contrary, asks the bystander to share the burden of pain. The victim demands action, engagement, and remembering.
I think I did realize that early on, and then I went through a fun phase where I was figuring out who I was and the different sides of myself. I think like most women, I bought into a certain ideal of beauty that I didn't quite fit into, and I tried to pretzel myself and alter myself to be what I was told is beautiful, and then I realized that you are in control of what you think is beautiful.
In the past, I put too much pressure on myself. I went out there and I tried so hard to get the ball in the hole, I tried so hard to hit the perfect shots.
I never felt any attraction towards violence. I never tried to express myself through violence. Violence is a language.
I didn't start writing so that I could more deeply know myself. I was bored of myself, my life, my childhood, my hometown. I started writing as a way to know others, to get away from myself.
To those who are incapable of presenting the historic truth in an honest way, I want to say that Poland was not a perpetrator but a victim of World War Two.
I have to say, my family's always been incredibly open and encouraging of any way I might want to express myself. At a very young age, they accepted that my outlet would be writing, and comedic writing, and they were pretty accepting of that.
When you're young, you're very insecure. And if I could learn, if I could revisit my own past I could say to myself, don't think too much, just get on and do it.
In order to escape accountability for his crimes, the perpetrator does everything in his power to promote forgetting. If secrecy fails, the perpetrator attacks the credibility of his victim. If he cannot silence her absolutely, he tries to make sure no one listens.
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