This is a Story of Redemption

I would never have guessed, in a million years, that my son, who watched me go through a horrendous opiate addiction — I mean, I hit bottoms that had trapdoors with more trapdoors.
- Tatum O'Neil
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To me, the great achievement of the novel is how sympathetically you treat the crazy interior life of an addict.
- Philip Galanes
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Poor me, poor me, pour me a drink.
- Tatum O'Neil
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There’s no good parenting if you’re under the influence of drugs. I knew that. So I couldn’t say: “But I had the most horrific childhood you can imagine.” I hated the way I felt inside. I had this exterior life in Hollywood that looked great. Little girls wanted to be me, boys wanted to date me. But I was being treated like the most terrible daughter that ever lived. All I wanted was my mom, and she wasn’t there. So when I finally met John and that didn’t work out, I had such a hole in my gut. I didn’t know what to fill it with. It was so empty. I kept filling it with heroin, then stopping, then going back. But I got clean. And I did two years of urine-testing, and I did get my kids back, damn it!
- Tatum O'Neal
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I did have one psychiatrist, Dr. Beatriz Foster. She’s the only one who told me, when I was about 14, “I don’t think your father is a good influence on you.” I’d never heard that before, even though he’d been hitting me and beating me and head-butting me for years. By the time I hit puberty, Ryan didn’t like me. Period. But he wouldn’t let me go. So he left me at the beach house [in Malibu] and went off with Farrah [Fawcett]. But I had this funny survival instinct.
- Tatum O'Neil
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There were times when Kevin said to me, “Just be a mom.”
- Tatum O'Neil
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What I’ve seen in my father is his desire to be great at something. I want to be a great writer, and I want to work hard at it. I’ve seen the discipline it takes from him. Put your head down and work and shut up.
-Kevin McEnroe

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