Leslie Morgan Steiner

“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.”

“The most important experience for learning to be a mother is your own mom's experience.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

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

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

“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.”

“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.”