Lionel Shriver Quotes

Domestic violence can be so easy for people to ignore, as it often happens without any witnesses and it is sometimes easier not to get involved. Yet, by publicly speaking out against domestic violence, together we can challenge attitudes towards violence in the home and show that domestic violence is a crime and not merely unacceptable.

Men who have been raised violently have every reason to believe it is appropriate for them to control others through violence; they feel no compunction over being violent to women, children, and one another.

Daddy loves you, but he smacks you, and he can shout at you and smash things, but Daddy still loves you. So when you get into a relationship with someone who does all of that, why would it be unusual?

Battered Women: sounds delicious. Doesn’t make it right.

Go mad, and beat their wives; Plunge (after shocking lives) Razors and carving knives Into their gizzards.

My wife is my best friend. The thought that people are afraid to go home to their partners for fear of being abused physically or emotionally makes me feel sick. It's not easy but you need to get help and get out.

[Domestic violence is] a carefully laid physical, financial and psychological trap.

As far as I'm concerned, love means fighting, big fat lies, and a couple of slaps across the face.

Domestic abuse happens only in intimate, interdependent, long-term relationships - in other words, in families - the last place we would want or expect to find violence.

To me, one of the big silver linings of the Simpson trial is the advances we've made in understanding domestic violence as a lethal problem. Before that trial, I think there was a widespread sense that it was a family affair, a normal part of a relationship, not really a crime. The reality is that it's very much a crime, and a very serious one.

Domestic violence and violence against women in general seems to be a big problem everywhere in the world. It seems to me this problem comes from stress, pent up anger, frustration, and all kinds of negativity within human beings.

An abusive relationship should be easy to identify though often one of the most difficult to end.

The parent storms, the child looks on, catches the lineaments of wrath, puts on the same airs in the circle of smaller slaves, gives a loose to the worst of passions, and thus nursed, educated and daily exercised in tyranny, cannot but be stamped by it with odious peculiarities.

I just can't see myself with a man on the ropes and just to prove how bad I am - and I see in his eyes, his head, he's hopeless - and I'm just deliberately hitting. I don't do that.

Few people who are hit once by someone they love respond in the way they might to a singular physical assault by a stranger.

An abusive relationship is worse than being in prison. I mean literally, not figuratively.

As a child, I heard in my home doctors and ambulance men say, 'Mrs. Stewart, you must've done something to provoke him.' 'Mrs. Stewart, it takes two to make an argument.' Wrong. Wrong! My mother did nothing to provoke that - and even if she had, violence is never ever a choice that a man should make. Ever.

There's no excuse for domestic violence. It sounds like a challenge. I mean, does everything have to be so black-and-white in this kindergarten country of ours? What if you come home from a long day at work and your wife has drowned two of your kids - she's about to dunk the third one. Can you run over and pop her then? Unfortunately no, there's no excuse. You're going to have to let her drown that third one.

Domestic violence causes far more pain than the visible marks of bruises and scars. It is devastating to be abused by someone that you love and think loves you in return. It is estimated that approximately 3 million incidents of domestic violence are reported each year in the United States.

If an adult uses violence on a child, the child will naturally assume that he too, has the right to use it on one smaller or weaker.

I know victims of domestic abuse. I know what it takes for people to get out, and I also know why people stay. It's heartbreaking.

There are endless new variations on how to hurt a woman physically, emotionally, financially, and socially.

Looks like she's been slapping the kid again.

My husband worked on Wall Street and was an Ivy League graduate as well. In our world, we were the last couple you'd imagine enmeshed in domestic violence.

Women can stand a beating except when it is with their own weapons.