Paul Nassif Quotes

For me, the toughest thing for kids to deal with is when the parents are fighting. It's not violence on them - it's the feeling of violence in the family.

It's extraordinary what children put up with. I happened to see two of my uncles put my father up against the wall of my grandmother's house and knock his teeth out, because he'd been unpleasant to my mother. The next day I went upstairs and found my father making a rather half-hearted attempt to gas himself.

Talk about your negative experiences with the father, with your girlfriends. Not with your children. And bite your tongue when it comes to diminishing, denying, dismissing, name-calling.

We now recognize that abuse and neglect may be as frequent in nuclear families as love, protection, and commitment are in nonnuclear families.

There was a ton of fighting between my mother and father. The kids would be thrown into the middle, to choose sides.

I loved my parents... but that can never change the fact that my father's violence ruined my childhood.

I just broke up all the furniture in the house. My mother had to get rid of me. So she put me in dance class.

It doesn't take a bruise or a broken bone for a child to be a victim of domestic violence. Kids who witness domestic violence are victims, too.

I was abused my family was the "brady bunch

I cannot, will never, understand these couples who hate each other, who conduct open warfare in front of their children - the kind of people who have to drop the kids off at the end of the driveway in case they lay eyes on one another. At the very least, civility must reign.

My parents had this relationship that was really terrifying. I mean, the level of hatred that they had, and the level of physical abuse - my mother would beat up my father, basically - and I think I was drawn to images on television that were bright and reflective.

Divorce isn't the child's fault. Don't say anything unkind about your ex to the child, because you're really just hurting the child.

My parents separated when I was younger.

Children are often the silent victims of drug abuse.

My father was a monster. A monster! I cut with my family when I was 23 and I never see them again.

There's sometimes a weird benefit to having an alcoholic, violent father. He really motivated me in that I never wanted to be anything like him.

When I can no longer bear to think of the victims of broken homes, I begin to think of the victims of intact ones.

My brother and I tortured my mother growing up.

The only thing my old man ever gave me was a beating.

The worst violence we can do to each other often is psychological, especially in families. I dwell a lot on domestic danger. That's the backdrop of most of my novels - what kind of damage is done without ever lifting a finger.

We're divorced from my father because he did some mean and scary things to us.

When you live in an alcoholic family or an abusive family, you tiptoe, you don't want to step on any mines.

Screaming at children over their grades, especially to the point of the child's tears, is child abuse, pure and simple. It's not funny and it's not good parenting. It is a crushing, scarring, disastrous experience for the child. It isn't the least bit funny.

It's' something I have gotten used to. I can't remember a time when my mother was not being attacked.

What is real is that adultery destroys tens of thousands of families every year across America. What is real is that adultery scars tens of thousands of children emotionally and psychologically every year. What is real is that adultery is an open wound in a relationship which more often than not overflows into domestic violence or worse.