John Niven Quotes

It's very strange that the people you love are often the people you're most cruel to.

It's as simple as you can explain all of 'Dallas.' We're a dysfunctional family forced to stay together.

The trouble is that, while my parents were great when they were apart, they were terrible together.

When I see siblings in some families not get along, I just struggle with that. My wife says I need to be more real about it, but I just can't believe it when it happens.

I think that the idea of wanting to fight for your kids, but also knowing that your wife is probably better at it, is something that rings very true for me.

I grew up watching my mom and my stepdad fight.

I'm not saying that every night of the week, my husband, ex-husband, our children and I all sit around together like one big happy family. But we do see each other frequently, and everyone loves each other, and we are all friends.

Most marriages don't add two people together. They subtract one from the other.

At best the family teaches the finest things human beings can learn from one another generosity and love. But it is also, all too often, where we learn nasty things like hate, rage and shame.

I don't know why my parents split up. I guess they just drifted apart, but I do know they stayed very good friends.

I think being raised by a single mother put me on the outside, and I would watch my mother's married friends and think, 'Why does she put him down in public?' or, 'Why is he so rude to her?' It seemed to me that there were very few marriages where the couple were genuinely in a supportive, loving partnership.

My biggest grouse since the time I filed for divorce has been that when all the drama unfolded, the children were made pawns. That should never be the case. You never know how it affects them.

It's important that adults get along with each other for the child's sake, and that is our situation.

I think that every decision I made came from what's best for the kids. If both parents have the children's best interests in mind, it's going to go OK. The second that the parents don't do that, it gets ugly.

Divorce is not easy, but if you genuinely put your kids first, that dictates the civility you should show each other. What example are you otherwise?

Living en famille provides the strongest motives for rudeness combined with the maximum opportunity for displaying it.

Relationships are complicated no matter what style of parenting you choose.

I like having a smaller family. I think the more people you have in the family, the more people there are to have problems with.

I've never understood why the end of a relationship - especially one involving children - has to immediately signal a descent into hatred and toxicity.

It's not that, you know, when a relationship doesn't work and there are issues, you have to somehow work it out if there are children involved.

Just about every therapist or counselor or social worker is practiced in dealing with people going through failing relationships, ending them, and confronting issues of custody and support.

I want my ex-wife and children to be happy.

I have been driven to the edge by parental alienation for many years now. You have to go through this to understand.

My parents split up when I was young, and they are still good friends. I think it's often projected that these things have to be so acrimonious. It's so often not the case.

A psychologist once told me that for a boy being in the middle of a conflict between two women is the worst possible situation. There's always a desire to please each one.