Wendy Liebman Quotes

My father was a very unhappy person, very sarcastic, and my mother was very nervous and worried about what people thought. They weren't monsters, but it wasn't a good childhood.

What must it be like for a little boy to read that daddy never loved mummy?

The wrongs of childhood and upbringing have made a large and obsessional contribution to autobiography and the novel.

I called my mother up and I said, 'You know, I've been to the best doctors in the world and I've spent almost half a million dollars and they're telling me I have symptoms of a P.O.W. and all I did was grow up in your home.'

I grew up in a family of secrets; there was a lot of pathology in the family.

My mom and dad got divorced when I was very young, and growing up in a family where the head of the household wasn't a man made a big difference.

I read a lot, very passionately, from the time I was very young, but it was a constant battle; my mother would more or less let me be, but with my father, I was always searching for a place where he wouldn't find me. Whenever he saw me reading, he would tell me to put the book down and go outside, act like a normal person.

The unjustifiable severity of a parent is loaded with this aggravation, that those whom he injures are always in his sight.

I can barely recall a single holiday when my father didn't make a scene or create some kind of chaos. We were always walking on eggshells.

I had a very angry father and was disconnected from my family.

She encouraged any artistic impulse I had, and my father discouraged any artistic impulse I had. They took out their problems with each other on me and my sister.

My mom obviously had a problem.

I didn't want to be the daughter of the crazy people.

I grew up in a confused house: too much unwanted attention or none at all.

The word 'divorce' wasn't foreign to me. As a child of the 1970s, I grew up as part of a generation of kids whose parents got divorced, and it wasn't seen as this terrible thing. Maybe that's why I believed what my father told me and Reina that day: that everything would be okay. But it wasn't.

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.

I always have to brace myself when I visit my parents. My mom often greets me with a slew of nonconstructive criticisms: 'Jimmy, why is your face so fat? Your clothes look homeless and your long hair makes you look like a girl.' After 30 years of this, my self-image is now a fat homeless lesbian.

I grew up in a broken home.

My brothers bullied me, so I cried a lot as a kid. It was the only defense I had. Telling them to stop wouldn't work. The crying would bring my dad. Dad was my cavalry.

My mother found herself in a triangular situation of my father and his legitimate wife. I experienced the emotional trauma of that triangle in my cradle.

The family unit is the institution for the systematic production of mental illness.

A small girl became increasingly paralysed by her parents' frequently violent rows. Sometimes she would spend hours standing completely still in the toilet, simply because that was where she happened to be when the fight began. Finally, in moments of calm, she would take bottles of milk from the fridge or doorstep and leave them in places where she may later become trapped. Her parents were unable to understand why they found bottles of sour milk in every room in the house.

I always knew she was being funny, but when I tell my therapist that my mom played the trust game with me and let me fall on the ground, my therapist does not find that funny. She's like, "That's the reason for everything! That's why you have such a hard time with trust!" And I'm like, "I don't really have a hard time with trust. I thought it was funny."

I felt angry, frustrated. I felt I didn't belong, not in my church, not in my home, not in my skin. Amidst the chaos, i felt alone, in need of a friend instead of a sister, someone detached from my world. The "woman's role" theory disgusted me. I would soon be a woman, and I knew I could never perform as expected. I was tired of my mom's submission to her religion, to her husband's sick quest for an heir, to his abuse. I was sick of my dad, of reaching for him as he fell farther away from us and into the arms of Johnnie WB.