Quotes from Leslie Morgan Steiner

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.

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.

Our culture encourages women to nurture men, making it predictable that many experience a seductive empathy for abusive men, as well as the misguided hope that love can obliterate an ugly past.

My mom is one of my role models in a complicated way. I learned from her how to be a good mom. She was one of those natural moms who really took to it. Her chosen profession was teaching. She loves kids. But she was extremely frustrated and unhappy because for much of my life she was a stay-at-home mom.

Women are naturally competitive. That's what drives women to form cliques at early age.

Working moms elevate themselves above stay-at-home moms, and stay-at-home moms try to put down working moms. It's a war in which both sides are trying to put the other one down.

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

It's incredibly dangerous to leave an abuser, because the final step in the domestic violence pattern is: kill her.

If there is one thing the psychic taught me, it's that people and events are rarely who and what we think they are. They are more meaningful, more worth our attention-part of some finely choreographed, eternal dance that we would be wise to bow down before in gratitude and humility.

I am so sorry for you, Leslie.' She said it like she really meant it. But not like she was completely surprised. 'And for him. Because he's lost you now.' This last part undid me. Despite her cruel criticism of me over the years, from where she sat, I was anyone and everyone's prize.

I know you love him, Leslie. But you can't sacrifice everything you've worked for, just for a man. This is Feminism 101. You know that already.

I had so much love in me that I never considered what moving for love would mean, what I might leave behind that could never be found again.

Hope is always good." He looked me in the face grinning, full of faith in me and in life. "You know, doctors always say the liver is the only organ that can regenerate itself. But they're wrong, Leslie. The heart can, too. Promise me you'll keep hoping.

Family violence is a criminal act; perpetrators, while often former victims themselves, need to accept culpability.