Sonny Liston Quotes

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

I was brought up in a very poor and very violent household. I spent much of my childhood being afraid.

Since I was probably eight years old, just about everyday, all the way until I was 14 or 15 years old, just about everyday my mom and my stepdad would roll around in the living room fighting.

I want to say that nobody accuses their parents of abusing them without justification to do that. I didn't just make it up. A lot of things were true and abusive and horrible things that happened to me that my father did.

There was mental and physical abuse in my 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.

My mother was physically and emotionally abusive. My father was an extremely cold man.

I grew up in an abusive home and was told on a daily basis by my father that I would never amount to anything and that I looked like a boy.

My first memory in the world is my gym teacher ripping my mother's necklace off her neck and throwing it out the window and her running downstairs to go after it. I have no memory before that. I was 4. My father had a lot of girlfriends and my mother had a lot of boyfriends.

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.

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

Mother beat the hell out of us. She'd have wild outbursts.

My Struggles is a record close to me. It's about what I went through at home living with an abusive father.

Unfortunately, some parents simply don't love their children. Probably they don't even love themselves. That may be the heart of their problem. Having parents like this is a terrible burden for any child and can shadow him all through life. It can even destroy him.

Let's not glamorize abuse.

My family would try and trick us and I would come to a party and she would be there. When I tell you the 'Love & Hip Hop' scene is nothing compared to what was happening with me and mom... throwing things at each other, the cursing, the words.

You know . . . a lot of kids at school hate their parents. Some of them got hit. And some of them got caught in the middle of wrong lives. Some of them were trophies for their parents to show the neighbors like ribbons or gold stars. And some of them just wanted to drink in peace.

My Papa's Waltz: The whiskey on your breath Could make a small boy dizzy; But I hung on like death: Such waltzing was not easy. We romped until the pans Slid from the kitchen shelf; My mother's countenance Could not unfrown itself. The hand that held my wrist Was battered on one knuckle; At every step you missed My right ear scraped a buckle. You beat time on my head With a palm caked hard by dirt, Then waltzed me off to bed Still clinging to your shirt.

Not all forms of abuse leave bruises.

I was so ugly my mother used to feed me with a sling shot.

But I'm very thankful that no one is slamming my head against the wall anymore.

I punched my mother out once.

My mind boggles at the amount of violence inflicted upon children in today's society.

I was an abused kid.

I grew up in a very toxic home.