Father And Son Quotes

“There is nothing like wounded affection for giving poignancy to anger.”
― Elizabeth Gaskell, Wives and Daughters

“I'm so sorry, Henri," I whisper in his ear. I close my eyes. "I love you. I wouldn't have missed a second of it, either. Not for anything," I whisper. "I'm going to take you back yet. Somehow I am going to get you back to Lorien. We always joked about it but you were my father, the best father I could have ever asked for. I'll never forget you, not for a minute for as long as I live. I love you, Henri. I always did.”
― Pittacus Lore, I Am Number Four

“No love is greater than that of a father for His son.”
― Dan Brown, Angels & Demons

“We may never speak about this again. But I hope you’ll never hold it against me that we did. I will have been a terrible father if, one day, you’d want to speak to me and felt that the door was shut or not sufficiently open.”
― André Aciman, Call Me by Your Name

“It's a father's duty to give his sons a fine chance.”
― George Eliot, Middlemarch

“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.”
― Bret Easton Ellis, Lunar Park

“[My father] loved me tenderly and shyly from a distance, and later on took a naive pride in seeing my name in print.”
― Arthur Koestler

“To be calm when you've found something going on”
― Yusuf Islam

“I’m not surprised to find Dad and I tiptoeing around the edge of conversation. After all, we’ve never spent a great deal of time discussing affairs of the heart. I had classmates at school who had startlingly candid exchanges with their fathers, frequently settling down on their living room sofa to confer on relationships, sex, drugs and mental health. The nearest my own father ever came to opening up about relationships came a few weeks before my twelfth birthday, when I awoke to find a copy of ‘The Joy of Sex’ by my bedside. Inside, Dad had written Any questions, just ask! in a jaunty script, but I think we both sensed that at least one of us would die of embarrassment if we were ever to have the conversation, so I never followed up on the offer and, mercifully, neither did Dad.”
― Andy Marr, A Matter of Life and Death

“Son, we are all products of operant conditioning. By daring to think outside the box, you'll be judged. Stay the course. Heightened cognizance is meaningful only when freely sought out and discovered. Not when it is incrementally spoon-fed to you throughout your lifetime.”
― A.K. Kuykendall

“Så tenkte jeg, og derfor sa jeg det. Men sørg ikke over dette; ti jeg selv har voldt at slik måtte det ende. Og Gud bedre det for deg, sønn, så du ikke arver vår lykke. Gjør nu som din mor vil; lenge har jeg lengtet etter at mitt hode skulle ligge i hennes fang.”
― Sigrid Undset, Gunnar's Daughter

“He doesn't love you," she said matter-of-factly. "He didn't love your mother, either, and I don't want you to spend your whole life waiting for something he can't give. Men like that, people are things to them. That's why he can pick you up and drop you as easily. But you're not a thing, Brandon. You're wonderful, and if he can't see that, he's broken. Not you. Don't ever forget that.”
― Kiersten White, Hide

“Dad?' 'Yeah?' 'Could you tell me a story?' 'Sure.' 'A good one.' 'As opposed to all the boring ones I tell.' 'Right.' I tucked my body incredibly close into his, so my nose pushed into his armpit. 'And you won't interrupt me?' 'I'll try not to.' 'Because it makes it hard to tell a story.' 'And it's annoying.' 'And it's annoying.'

The moment before he started was my favorite moment.”
― Jonathan Safran Foer, Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close

“Lookee here, Pip, at what is said to you by a true friend. Which this to you the true friend say. If you can't get to be oncommon through going straight, you'll never get to do it through going crooked. So don't tell no more on 'em, Pip, and live well and die happy.”
― Charles Dickens, Great Expectations

“The sun comes up after breakfast, but you wouldn't know it. Cloud hold the sun back in its scabbard, only the faintest murmur of light. Dad is full of bacon and big ideas. He looks like a grizzly bear and I wonder for a moment if I'll ever have to wrestle him.”
― Spencer K.M. Brown, Hold Fast

“The sun comes up after breakfast, but you wouldn't know it. Clouds hold the sun back in its scabbard, only the faintest murmur of light. Dad is full of bacon and big ideas. He looks like a grizzly bear and I wonder for a moment if I'll ever have to wrestle him.”
― Spencer K.M. Brown, Hold Fast

“With the last of my magic, I pledge to help Pinocchio become a real boy." She extended her hand to Chiara. "You remember what happened when our magics came together and struck your dove?"
As if on cue, Chiara's white dove flew past them and landed on Ilaria's arm.
"She came to life," Chia murmured. "Thanks to the two of us."
"It takes two to make miracles happen," said Ily. "Will you do the honors?"
Taking in a deep breath, Chiara nodded, and together, hand in hand, the sisters approached the lifeless Pinocchio.
Prove yourself brave, truthful, and unselfish, and someday you will be a real boy. She touched her wand to Pinocchio's head. "Awake, Pinocchio. Awake."
Magic brimmed across the young boy's still body, bringing him to life. His cheeks turned rosy, and his wooden nose became one made of flesh, the nails in his knees and elbows turning into joints and bone and muscle. Gone were his donkey ears and tail.
"Papa!" he spoke. "Papa, I'm alive!"
Geppetto rose from the sand, unable to believe his ears. But when he saw his dearest Pinocchio a real boy, his tears of sorrow turned to joy. He scooped his boy into his arms. "My son," he whispered. "You've come home."
Chiara watched them, her heart full of relief and gladness. This was what made her love being a fairy--- the tender moments of joy, the proof that hope was never in vain.”
― Elizabeth Lim, When You Wish Upon a Star

“Everything is a target, says the hunter. No matter where you look. The hunter's son says nothing, and closes his eyes.”
― Richard Siken, War of the Foxes

“Lewis's father rises, puts a hand on his son's shoulder, and squeezes hard. This is the closest the two men have ever come to embracing.”
― Emily Habeck, Shark Heart

“I persuade Dad to take me to Miguel's.
At dinner his favorite topic of conversation is the space-time continuum.
This is interesting because
space
and
time
are the only two things
I actually wish he would give me.
I just don't know how to tell him that.”
― Rebecca Caprara, Worst-Case Collin

“It's too late. I'll never forgive you for that. Apologize all you want, but you can't erase the past. You should know that better than anyone, father.”
― Emily Grace, River Of Sorrows

“See Me In One by Stewart Stafford

Crave not aged flight,
Your titian crown ringed,
With cherubim cheeks,
In child's play, winged.

I shed this life's skin,
My texts echoing guide,
Find flesh through them,
Righteous wordage sighed.

In forest dark, I found you,
All before, a stillborn nought,
Of everything in ardour rendered,
Your form, pride's ransom bought.

© Stewart Stafford, 2024. All rights reserved.”
― Stewart Stafford

“I hear your words like echoes through the veil, carried on winds that do not stir the living. We linger in thought and shadow, remembering, watching, waiting. Hope drifts between us like mist, touching but never holding.

Love lingers beyond time,
whispering, always”
― Jonathan Harnisch, Living Colorful Beauty

“Cheapskate

The day I blurted the word out at my father
I was still an in-the-dark toe-headed excuse
for leaving early from the Sunday ritual -
the after-church bourbon-fumed lunches
of deviled eggs, Vienna sausages, and saltines
at his mother’s airless La Jolla bungalow,
what Purgatory must’ve smelled like in 1962.
I doubt even this “intermediate state after death
for expiatory purification,” according to Webster,
endured as long as our visits that my own mother
artfully dodged and I failed to appreciate,
an annoyance that incited the battle-axe’s contempt
and me to mime her derision, drawing into question
the battery life of her cumbersome hearing aids.
Often my father zipped a finger across his throat,
though amusement danced in the lines of his brow,
unlike when I burst in on them à la Soupy Sales
or lurched into histrionic spasms of boredom,
forcing their conversation into ellipses, usually
over an envelope he set by her lipsticked tumbler.
That called for banishment to the tiny courtyard
where among a few droopy orange trees
I could kill time and escape the weird reversal
of my father no longer himself to her,
but a mother to his own mother, a slow suffocation
that on occasion drove him outside.
During our last visit, the week of a heat wave,
I’d been rolling oranges like depth-charges
into her moribund pond of scabby goldfish.
I had no idea anger could travel in the family
when the door kicked open, and out he came
cracking like ice in a glass of the bourbon
hidden in her unused kitchenette oven.
One of the oranges swiped his wingtips
with its fetid juice, and he picked it up,
a Zeus lost in a thousand-yard gaze of divine wrath,
then hurled it at the pink retaining wall.
Long after he returned inside I stood still,
entranced by the splatter as if its tentacles of anger
reached out to me, though my behavior, the orange,
or even cash in an envelope - what he feared
I’d one day too place beside his own drink -
had less to do with his outburst than imagined.
Nothing was ever so simple about him.
On the drive home, the windows rolled up,
we swept by 31 Flavors without slowing down
while kids on tailgates slurped ice cream,
and riding shotgun, I just snapped,
calling him that terrible thing
you can never take back - a cheapskate.
Suddenly we coasted in the wake of it
worse than any blasphemy or sacrilege,
the tires thumping louder than ever
on seamed concrete until his white knuckles
flew off the wheel at me, and belted-in
I ducked to cushion the blow.
His legacy halted mid-air. By chance
in the rearview mirror he’d caught
his own father’s fist coming on fast, too late
for both of us to get out of the way.”
― Jim Frazee, Thief of Laughter

“Lumayo man, mas lumapit sa gunita’t puso namin. Happy Father's Day ”
― Aron Micko H.B

“Your father wouldn’t want this,” he said. “He wouldn’t want this for you.”
My eyes started to burn.
“If he’s gone, what does it matter?” I said hoarsely. “What does it matter what he would have wanted?”
“It will always matter,”
― T.J. Klune, Into This River I Drown

“I was so willing to give up, and all along, the answer was under our feet. I'm sorry. I thought... I thought a lot of things that were wrong, but I should never have given up on our home--- or on you."
That was a real apology.
Looking at Yarrow, Terlu could tell that he heard it too. Unlike Birch's earlier attempts, this one sounded like it came from the heart--- that he both wanted to fix things and understood why they'd broken.”
― Sarah Beth Durst, The Enchanted Greenhouse

“I didn't need a reason to love you — just a chance to notice everything you are.”
― Emna's Book Editions, My Dad Rocks: 101 Reasons Why I Love You, Dad: A Guided Fill-in-the-Blank Journal for Dad

“You thaught me that real heroes don't fly — they stand beside you.”
― Emna's Book Editions, 101 Reasons Why My Mom ROCKS: A Fill in the Blank Guided Journal to Say I Love You – A Thoughtful Gift and Keepsake for Mom

“You taught me that real heroes don't fly — they stand beside you.”
― Emna's Book Editions, My Dad Rocks: 101 Reasons Why I Love You, Dad: A Guided Fill-in-the-Blank Journal for Dad