Father Quotes

“I bring this up because in writing some thoughts about a father, or not having a father, I feel as though I'm writing a book about a troll under a bridge or a dragon. For me, a father was nothing more than a character in a fairy tale. I know fathers are not like dragons because fathers actually exist. I have seen them on television and sliding their arms around their wives in grocery stores, and I have seen them in the malls and in the coffee shops, but these were characters in other people's stories. The sad thing is, as a kid, I wondered why I couldn't have a dragon, but I never wondered why I didn't have a father. (page 20)”

“I bring this up because in writing some thoughts about a father, or not having a father, I feel as though I'm writing a book about a troll under a bridge or a dragon. For me, a father was nothing more than a character in a fairy tale. I know fathers are not like dragons because fathers actually exist. I have seen them on television and sliding their arms around their wives in grocery stores, and I have seen them in the malls and in the coffee shops, but these were characters in other people's stories. The sad thing is, as a kid, I wondered why I couldn't have a dragon, but I never wondered why I didn't have a father. (page 20)”

“You wanted to kill your father in order to be your father yourself. Now you are your father, but a dead father.”

“The heroin flowing through me, I thought about the last time I saw my father alive. He was drunk and overweight in a restaurant in Beverly Hills, and curling into myself on the bed I thought: What if I had done something that day? I had just sat passively in a restaurant booth as the midday light filled the half-empty dining room, pondering a decision. The decision was: should you disarm him? That was the word I remember: disarm. Should you tell him something that might not be the truth but would get the desired reaction? And what was I going to convince him of, even though it was a lie? Did it matter? Whatever it was, it would constitute a new beginning. The immediate line: You’re my father and I love you. I remember staring at the white tablecloth as I contemplated saying this. Could I actually do it? I didn’t believe it, and it wasn’t true, but I wanted it to be. For one moment, as my father ordered another vodka (it was two in the afternoon; this was his fourth) and started ranting about my mother and the slump in California real estate and how “your sisters” never called him, I realized it could actually happen, and that by saying this I would save him. I suddenly saw a future with my father. But the check came along with the drink and I was knocked out of my reverie by an argument he wanted to start and I simply stood up and walked away from the booth without looking back at him or saying goodbye and then I was standing in sunlight. Loosening my tie as a parking valet pulled up to the curb in the cream-colored 450 SL. I half smiled at the memory, for thinking that I could just let go of the damage that a father can do to a son. I never spoke to him again.”

“Sir Arthur grimaced. He hated violence - perhaps his father ingrained that into him. But he still fought, for principle and for father's legacy. Now that legacy meant the protection of defenseless women. There were a few Persians in the way to execute that duty. He stabbed his blade into a Tatar's chest. Another one.”

“Fathers are… The teeth on a saw,The head of a nail,The blades on a mower.Fathers are…The grit in a tumbler,The cement in the pit,The coin for the machine.Fathers are…The air in the tires,The spring in the suspension,The key to the ignition.Fathers are... the confidence in a dare,The energy of a command,The boots for the trail.Tis true you might make things work without them, but not at all like they were meant to.”

“We never get over our fathers, and we’re not required to. (Irish Proverb)”

“For many years, February was a difficult month for me after the death of my parents. My father died in February, just a week before my mother's birthday. For years their loss cast a pall over the month. I missed them terribly. But time has changed things. I see my father often in the face of my son and I run into my mother daily each time I pass the hall mirror.”

“Father of fathers!”

“Call no man your father upon the earth: for one is your Father which is in heaven.”

“She wanted to punch her father in his snout, but she wouldn’t. He was her father after all. True, a father whose funeral rite she planned to dance at and toast with ale, but her father just the same.”