This is a collection of my favorite inspiring quotations and poetry.

I think they are especially helpful for survivors of rape and sexual abuse.

You may trod me
in the very dirt
But still,
like dust,
I'll rise.
-Maya Angelou

give me life, give me pain, give me myself again
with your pretty wing; a wing can cover all sorts of things.
Me and A Gun has been my flashlight; the thing has taken me by the hand
    and led me down a very, very long recovery path.
I found a way to dance with sorrow.
so I wore a slinky red thing, does that mean I should spread for you?
sometimes I hear my voice and it's been here, silent all these years
I've got my rape hat on honey but I always could accessorize.
Though I can't change what happened, I can choose how to react. And I don't want to
    spend the rest of my life being bitter and locked up. Past the mission/I smell the roses
You don't need my voice, girl, you have your own
Somebody will come backstage and go, 'You saved me.'
    And I will have to say, 'Stop right there. You saved yourself.'
-Tori Amos

Do not go gentle into that good night . . . Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
-Dylan Thomas

In the midst of winter, I finally learned that there was in me an invincible summer
-Albert Camus

It is better to suffer wrong than to do it
-Samuel Johnson

Would you understand me? Would you try?
Peace in the struggle to find peace; comfort on the way to comfort
who will bring you back from where there is no return?
If I shed a tear I won't cage it; I won't fear love. If I feel a rage I won't deny it; I won't fear love
-Sarah McLachlan

Every time I say something they find hard to hear, they chalk it up to my anger, and never to their own fear.
-Ani DiFranco

When you live in the shadow of insanity, the appearance of another mind that thinks and talks as yours does is something close to a blessed event.
-Robert Pirsig

Pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses your understanding
-Kahlil Gibran

If you always watch the demons behind you, then you will never see the angels ahead.

Little girl comes to you cautiously, gingerly; does she dare to trust again?
She comes on dark wings, with pink ribbons
wanting pretty things, ice cream
and a place in your heart
She whispers and wants you to listen
She is fragile and strong
Like a milkweed seed
floating, looking for somewhere to land
if you nurture her, she will grow
and bring you gifts of butterflies
-Ellen Jaffee Bitz

the desire to forget the past is a form of suicide.
I have come to believe that many of is would sooner die than remove our masks and stand barefaced before the world.
-richard bode

...show me a way to belong to the present by reaching into the past
-nick bantock ("The forgetting room")

We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are.
-anais nin

God grant me the serenity
to accept the things i cannot change
the courage to change the things i can
and the wisdom to know the difference.

Absolute silence leads to sadness. It is the image of death.
-Jean Jacques Rousseau

but where there's a monser there's a miracle
-odgen nash

...facing a truth i could no longer deny, alone as ever...
-dana scully

Still, it was much easier not to believe in something when it was not actually looking directly at you and saying your name.
-Neil Gaiman

Behind each human face is a hidden world that no one can see.
We cannot continue to seek outside ourselves for the things we need from within.
The demons will haunt us if we remain afraid.
Silence is one of the great victims of modern culture.
-John O'Donohue

He caught her up reluctant on his golden car and bare her away lamenting. Then she cried out shrilly with her voice, calling upon her father, the Son of Cronos... but no one, either of the deathless gods or of mortal men, heard her voice....
-From the story of Persephone; Homeric Hymns 2.1

If you're going through hell, keep going.
-Winston Churchill

Well, I've been afraid of changing
Cause I've built my life around you
But time makes you bolder
Even children get older
And I'm getting older too
-Stevie Nicks

to be nobody-but-myself in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make me everybody else means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight and never stop fighting
-e.e. cummings

i found god in myself
& i loved her
i loved her fiercely
-Ntozake Shange

Character cannot be developed
in ease and quiet.
Only through experience
of trial and suffering
can the soul be strengthened,
vision cleared,
ambition inspired
and success achieved.
-Helen Keller

Such a long journey ahead for you and me, not a matter of hope, but imagination
-Andre Brinks, An Instant in the Wind