Fathering Quotes (page 11)
When I went to first grade and the other children said that their fathers were farmers, I simply didn't believe them. I agreed in order to be polite, but in my heart I knew that those men were impostors, as farmers and as fathers, too. In my youthful estimation, Laurence Cook defined both categories. To really believe that others even existed in either category was to break the First Commandment.
Jane Smiley
Sir Richard sighed. "Rid yourself of the notion that I cherish any villainous designs upon you person," he said. "I imagine I might well be your father. How old are you?"I am turned seventeen."Well, I am nearly thirty," said Sir Richard. Miss Creed worked this out. "You couldn't possibly be my father!"I am far too drunk to solve arithmetical problems. Let is suffice that I have not the slightest intention of making love to you.
Georgette Heyer
For when is the child the ideal child in our eyes and to our hearts? Is it not when with gentle hand he takes his father by the beard, and turns that father's face up to his brothers and sisters to kiss? when even the lovely selfishness of love-seeking has vanished, and the heart is absorbed in loving?
George MacDonald
will you remember this day Gogol?'his father asked , turning back to look at him, his hands pressed like earmuffs to either side of his head . 'How long do I have to remember it' . Over the rise and fall of the wind , he could hear his father's laughter.He was standing there , waiting for Gogol to catch up , putting out a hand as Gogol drew near. 'Try to remember it always' he once Gogol had reached him , leading him slowly back towards the breakwater , to where his mother and Sonia stood...
Jhumpa Lahiri
The day of my departure at length arrived. Clerval spent the last evening with us. He had endeavoured to persuade his father to permit him to accompany me and to become my fellow student, but in vain. His father was a narrow-minded trader, and saw idleness and ruin in the aspirations and ambition of his son. Henry deeply felt the misfortune of being debarred from a liberal education. He said little, but when he spoke I read in his kindling eye and in his animated glance a restrained but firm...
Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
Grasping the doorknob, Tengo turned around one last time and was shocked to see a single tear running down from his father's eye. It shone a dull silver color under the ceiling's fluorescent light. To release that tear, his father must have squeezed every bit of strength from what little emotion he still had left.
Haruki Murakami
And Father said, “There are no happy endings.” “Right!” cried Iowa Bob – an odd mixture of exuberance and stoicism in his cracked voice. “Death is horrible, final, and frequently premature,” Coach Bob declared. “So what?” my father said. “Right!” cried Iowa Bob. “That’s the point: So what?” Thus the family maxim was that an unhappy ending did not undermine a rich and energetic life. This was based on the belief that there were no happy endings.
John Irving
His mind floated in the amniotic fluid of memory, listening for echoes of the past. His father, meanwhile, had no idea that such a vivid scene was burned into Tengo's brain or that, like a cow in the meadow, Tengo was endlessly regurgitating fragments of the scene to chew on, a cud from which he obtained essential nutrients. Father and son: each was locked in a deep, dark embrace with his secrets.
Haruki Murakami
Were I to go down into the market-place, armed with the powers of witchcraft, and take a peasant by the shoulders and whisper to him, 'In your lifetime, have you known peace?' wait for his answer, shake his shoulders and transform him into his father, and ask him the same question, and transform him in his turn to his father, I would never hear the word 'Yes,' if I carried my questioning of the dead back for a thousand years. I would always hear, 'No, there was fear, there were our enemies...
Rebecca West
His father, who for years had refused to speak to Eddie, now lacked the strength to even try. He watched his son with heavy-lidded eyes. Eddie, after struggling to find even one sentence to say, did the only thing he could think of to do: He held up his hands and showed his father his grease-stained fingertips.
Mitch Albom
I'm a survivor. I was thinking about what you said, and you're absolutely right - I have to let go to continue. This devastating news is not going to slow me down. I'm my own person. I always have been. I've never believed in those people who blame everything on their parents - you know, I'm a fuck-up because my father was a fuck-up. Or I'm a drunk because my mother was an alcoholic. So my father was a hit man? Maybe. So he murdered my mother? Maybe. I don't know any of these things for a...
Jackie Collins
Peeta, you said at the interview you’d had a crush on me forever. When did forever start?
Oh, let’s see. I guess the first day of school. We were five. You had on a red plaid dress and your hair...it was in two braids instead of one. My father pointed you out when we were waiting to line up."
Your father? Why?"
He said, ‘See that little girl? I wanted to marry her mother, but she ran off with a coal miner.'"
What? You’re making that up!"
No, true story. And I said, 'A coal miner? Why did...
Suzanne Collins