“Not just the beating. The words. 'Boris, you're stubborn, lazy, worthless, you can't do anything right, you're evil' -- at least once I heard him call Boris evil. When you grow up with things like that, you never get rid of them, never. Words like that are a tape that plays in your head for the rest of your life.”

― Joan Wickersham, The Suicide Index: Putting My Father's Death in Order