I value mothers and motherhood enormously. For every inattentive or abusive mother in my fiction I think you'll find a dozen or so who are neither.

It was my first big relationship and it was just very abusive. I wouldn't give him the credit of naming him if he ever reads this. But he was older in the music business - or so he said.

I got married at 22 and remained in an abusive marriage for 10 years. I made up my mind that that was never going to happen to me again. I made a brave step to walk out in a society when you didn't walk out of an abusive marriage. It was mental and physical abuse.

A kid in an abusive home has far fewer rights than any POW. There is no Geneva Convention for kids.

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.

If we can't begin to agree on fundamentals such as the elimination of the most abusive forms of child labor then we really are not ready to march forward into the future.

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