Top 200 Kate Elizabeth Russell Quotes (2024 Update)

1. “To be groomed is to be loved and handled like a precious, delicate thing.”

— Kate Elizabeth Russell

2. “There must be a point where you’re allowed to be defined by something other than what he did to you.”

— Kate Elizabeth Russell

3. “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?”

— Kate Elizabeth Russell

4. “Vanessa,” she says gently, “you didn’t ask for that. You were just trying to go to school.”

— Kate Elizabeth Russell

5. “He was a grown man and you were fifteen,” she says. “What could you have possibly done to torture him?”

— Kate Elizabeth Russell

6. “I’m no longer myself; I am no one. I’m a red balloon caught in the boughs of a tree. I’m nothing at all.”

— Kate Elizabeth Russell

7. “The article says Strane groomed the girls. Groomed. I repeat the word over and over, try to understand what it means, but all I can think of is the lovely warm feeling I’d get when he stroked my hair.”

— Kate Elizabeth Russell

8. “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

9. “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

10. “People will risk everything for a little bit of something beautiful.”

— Kate Elizabeth Russell

11. “When Strane and I met, I was fifteen and he was forty-two, a near perfect thirty years between us. That’s how I described the difference back then – perfect. I loved the math of it, three times my age, how easy it was to imagine three of me fitting inside him: one of me curled around his brain, another around his heart, the third turned to liquid and sliding through his veins.”

— Kate Elizabeth Russell

12. “Kneeling before me, he lays his head on my lap and says, ‘I’m going to ruin you.”

— Kate Elizabeth Russell

13. “He says that by believing our lives have endless possibilities, we stave off the horrifying truth that to live is merely to move forward through time while an internal clock counts down to a final, fatal moment. “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

14. “I’m going to ruin you.”

— Kate Elizabeth Russell

15. “There’s another option for those brave enough to take it: bypass boys altogether, go straight to men. Men who will never make you wait; men who are starved and grateful for scraps of attention, who fall in love so hard they throw themselves at your feet.”

— Kate Elizabeth Russell

16. “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

17. “His voice as soothing as a bomb.”

— Kate Elizabeth Russell

18. “Humbert, describing the qualities of the nymphet hidden among ordinary girls: “she stands unrecognized by them and unconscious herself of her fantastic power.”

— Kate Elizabeth Russell

19. “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

20. “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

21. “I ignore what hangs in the air above us, my anger, my humiliation and hurt. They seem like the real monsters, all those unspeakable things.”

— Kate Elizabeth Russell

22. “Mom says dwelling in your feelings is no way to live, that there will always be something to be upset about and the secret to a happy life is not to let yourself be dragged down into negativity. She doesn’t understand how satisfying sadness can be; hours spent rocking in the hammock with Fiona Apple in my ears make me feel better than happy.”

— Kate Elizabeth Russell

23. “I get the feeling all he really wants is to leave part of himself inside me, to stake his claim, not to impregnate me or anything like that, but something more permanent. 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

24. “I’m sorry,” she says. “I don’t mean to mock. It’s just so typical, you know? That way he’d berate himself to make you feel sorry for him.”

— Kate Elizabeth Russell

25. “I don’t remember, not exactly. So many of my memories from back then are shadowy, incomplete. I need him to fill in the gaps, though sometimes the girl he describes sounds like a stranger.”

— Kate Elizabeth Russell

26. “I feel a familiar fear: maybe I’m crazy, narcissistic, delusional. Someone so stuck in her own brain, she turns unwilling bystanders into ghosts.”

— Kate Elizabeth Russell

27. “The nine other students pack up their things and leave the classroom to carry on with their lives, to practices and rehearsals and club meetings. I leave the room, too, but I’m not part of them. They’re the same, but I’m changed. I’m unhuman now. Unthetered. While they walk across campus, earthbound and ordinary, I soar, trailing a maple-red comet tail. I’m no longer myself; I am no one. I’m a red balloon caught in the boughts of a tree. I’m nothing at all.”

— Kate Elizabeth Russell

28. “My most brazen behavior: going braless one day under a silk camisole, but then I’m disgusted when he stares – so what is it that I want? I don’t know, I don’t know.”

— Kate Elizabeth Russell

29. “In the photos, ferns brush my thighs and sunlight streams through my hair, making me look like a wood nymph, like Persephone wandering her meadow, waiting for Hades to come.”

— Kate Elizabeth Russell

30. “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

31. “I loved the math of it, three times my age, how easy it was to imagine three of me fitting inside him: one of me curled around his brain, another around his heart, the third turned to liquid and sliding through his veins.”

— Kate Elizabeth Russell

32. “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

33. “Assault can be anything, like how battery can mean you grabbed someone by the wrist or shoved their shoulder. It’s a meaningless legal term.”

— Kate Elizabeth Russell

34. “Does that feel good? Does that make me happy? My eyelids flutter as his hands move up my thigh. He lives to please me. Even if we end up apart, right now, he worships me – his dark Vanessa. That should be enough. I’m lucky to have this, to be so loved.”

— Kate Elizabeth Russell

35. “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

36. “The secrecy, once a necessity, now seems a product of shame.”

— Kate Elizabeth Russell

37. “She didn’t understand the horror of watching your body star in something your mind didn’t agree to.”

— Kate Elizabeth Russell

38. “I wonder how much victimhood they’d be willing to grant a girl like me.”

— Kate Elizabeth Russell

39. “I haven’t been gaslighted into senselessness.”

— Kate Elizabeth Russell

40. “Worry makes people butt in where they don’t belong.”

— Kate Elizabeth Russell

41. “It’s just so typical, you know? That way he’d berate himself to make you feel sorry for him.”

— Kate Elizabeth Russell

42. “I just really need it to be a love story. You know? I really, really need it to be that.”

— Kate Elizabeth Russell

43. “Flirting is supposed to be fun and this is too heavy for fun.”

— Kate Elizabeth Russell

44. “Mom says dwelling in your feelings is no way to live, that there will always be something to be upset about and the secret to a happy life is not to let yourself be dragged down into negativity.”

— Kate Elizabeth Russell

45. “The thought makes me so tired all I can think is I’d rather be dead than go through this again.”

— Kate Elizabeth Russell

46. “It’s just that I’m depraved, my mind so warped by Strane that I misinterpret innocent favoritism as sexual interest.”

— Kate Elizabeth Russell

47. “Aren’t you going to ask where I’ve been?” I say. She stares at me, into me. She sees everything. “If I did,” she says, “would you tell me the truth?”

— Kate Elizabeth Russell

48. “The line of Polaroids stretches across my living room, the strawberry pajamas draped over the radiator. I wonder what level of crazy I’ve reached and how much further I could go, how many more steps until I become a woman who boards up the windows to live uninterrupted in the filth of her past.”

— Kate Elizabeth Russell

49. “Isn’t that what all teenage girls want? Endlessly bored, aching for an audience.”

— Kate Elizabeth Russell

50. “I initially sought out the novel because a musician I adored named it as his favorite in Rolling Stone, but even if I’d never read that interview, I would have found my way to Lolita. Because it’s more than a book; it’s an unavoidable archetype baked into our culture.”

— Kate Elizabeth Russell