Quotes from Susan Rivers

In truth I am changed by the event, and not for the better. Seeing how easily I can be physically overpowered has sapped a great deal of my fighting spirit. In the wake of this violation of my home and my person I experience an unfamiliar emotion: fear. I perceive fear rushes into the spaces left when confidence flees, when a woman realizes she is no longer a person of any particular importance or authority, as she had long been allowed to believe.

My feelings about women in general have been shaped by mother in particular--and Placidia, while nearly always loving and approachable to her children, raised us on a Spartan diet of independent thought, moral integrity, and self-reliance that has shaped our relations with the world, making our paths more difficult but the journey more meaningful.