“
Often father and daughter look down on mother (woman) together. They exchange meaningful glances when she misses a point. They agree that she is not bright as they are, cannot reason as they do. This collusion does not save the daughter from the mother’s fate.
”
”
Bonnie Burstow (Radical Feminist Therapy: Working in the Context of Violence)
“
Father, I am what you made me. I’ve become your daughter after all.
”
”
Holly Black (The Cruel Prince (The Folk of the Air, #1))
“
Most fathers don't threaten to disembowel their daughter's boyfriends."
"That's not true. And anyway, that's not what I actually said. It was much worse.
”
”
Richelle Mead (Spirit Bound (Vampire Academy, #5))
“
What I really want to tell him is to pick up that baby of his and hold her tight, to set the moon on the edge of her crib and to hang her name up in the stars.
”
”
Jodi Picoult (My Sister's Keeper)
“
There is divine beauty in learning... To learn means to accept the postulate that life did not begin at my birth. Others have been here before me, and I walk in their footsteps. The books I have read were composed by generations of fathers and sons, mothers and daughters, teachers and disciples. I am the sum total of their experiences, their quests. And so are you.
”
”
Elie Wiesel
“
Because death is the only thing that could have ever kept him from you.
”
”
Ally Carter (Out of Sight, Out of Time (Gallagher Girls, #5))
“
There is nothing like wounded affection for giving poignancy to anger.
”
”
Elizabeth Gaskell (Wives and Daughters)
“
Fathers never have exactly the daughters they want because they invent a notion a them that the daughters have to conform to.
”
”
Simone de Beauvoir (The Woman Destroyed)
“
Daddy," I whispered, feeling my own breath hitch in my throat. "I love you."
Just when I was sure he was asleep, the one corner of his mouth lifted in a smile. "I knew that," he murmured. "Always knew that.
”
”
Morgan Matson (Second Chance Summer)
“
Believe nothing a man tells you and everything he shows you"....(Taken from a farewell video from a dying father to his infant daughter on dating)
”
”
Randy Pausch
“
A wedding is for daughters and fathers. The mothers all dress up, trying to look like young women. But a wedding is for a father and daughter. They stop being married to each other on that day.
”
”
Sarah Ruhl (Eurydice)
“
She’ll find you. Her need to know you will eventually consume her.
”
”
Stephen Douglass (The Tainted Trust (The King Trilogy #2))
“
I think how the world is still somehow beautiful even when I feel no joy at being alive within it.
”
”
Loung Ung (First They Killed My Father: A Daughter of Cambodia Remembers)
“
Just because your father's present, doesn't mean he isn't absent.
”
”
Elizabeth Acevedo (The Poet X)
“
It is not unknown for fathers with a brace of daughters to reel off their names in order of birth when summoning the youngest, and I had long ago become accustomed to being called 'Ophelia Daphne Flavia, damn it.
”
”
Alan Bradley (The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie (Flavia de Luce, #1))
“
To be the father of growing daughters is to understand something of what Yeats evokes with his imperishable phrase 'terrible beauty.' Nothing can make one so happily exhilarated or so frightened: it's a solid lesson in the limitations of self to realize that your heart is running around inside someone else's body. It also makes me quite astonishingly calm at the thought of death: I know whom I would die to protect and I also understand that nobody but a lugubrious serf can possibly wish for a father who never goes away.
”
”
Christopher Hitchens (Hitch 22: A Memoir)
“
She had never loved him so much as she did in that instant.
”
”
George R.R. Martin (A Game of Thrones (A Song of Ice and Fire, #1))
“
He wipes tears off my face and then snot. He uses his hands. He loves me that much.
”
”
Nina LaCour (Hold Still)
“
He sweeps her hair back from her ears; he swings her above his head. He says she is his émerveillement. He says he will never leave her, not in a million years.
”
”
Anthony Doerr (All the Light We Cannot See)
“
Sacrifice is a part of life. It’s supposed to be. It’s not something to regret. It’s something to aspire to. Little sacrifices. Big sacrifices. A mother works so her son can go to school. A daughter moves home to take care of her sick father.
”
”
Mitch Albom (The Five People You Meet in Heaven)
“
Why Not You?
Today, many will awaken with a fresh sense of inspiration. Why not you?
Today, many will open their eyes to the beauty that surrounds them. Why not you?
Today, many will choose to leave the ghost of yesterday behind and seize the immeasurable power of today. Why not you?
Today, many will break through the barriers of the past by looking at the blessings of the present. Why not you?
Today, for many the burden of self doubt and insecurity will be lifted by the security and confidence of empowerment. Why not you?
Today, many will rise above their believed limitations and make contact with their powerful innate strength. Why not you?
Today, many will choose to live in such a manner that they will be a positive role model for their children. Why not you?
Today, many will choose to free themselves from the personal imprisonment of their bad habits. Why not you?
Today, many will choose to live free of conditions and rules governing their own happiness. Why not you?
Today, many will find abundance in simplicity. Why not you?
Today, many will be confronted by difficult moral choices and they will choose to do what is right instead of what is beneficial. Why not you?
Today, many will decide to no longer sit back with a victim mentality, but to take charge of their lives and make positive changes. Why not you?
Today, many will take the action necessary to make a difference. Why not you?
Today, many will make the commitment to be a better mother, father, son, daughter, student, teacher, worker, boss, brother, sister, & so much more. Why not you?
Today is a new day!
Many will seize this day.
Many will live it to the fullest.
Why not you?
”
”
Steve Maraboli (Life, the Truth, and Being Free)
“
He had then warned his daughter not to violate the Eleventh Commandment.
"Which one is that?" I asked her.
"Do not bullshit thy father," she said.
”
”
Erich Segal (Love Story (Love Story, #1))
“
A father’s tears and fears are unseen, his love is unexpressed, but his care and protection remains as a pillar of strength throughout our lives.
”
”
Ama H. Vanniarachchy
“
I wanted to eat her pain, take it into me and make it my own.
”
”
Ann Patchett (The Patron Saint of Liars)
“
There are different kinds of fathers. Those who love unconditionally, those who love on condition, and those who never love at all.
”
”
Tricia Levenseller (Daughter of the Pirate King (Daughter of the Pirate King, #1))
“
a daughter should
not have to
beg her father
for a relationship
”
”
Rupi Kaur (Milk and honey)
“
We are the girls with anxiety disorders, filled appointment books, five-year plans. We take ourselves very, very seriously. We are the peacemakers, the do-gooders, the givers, the savers. We are on time, overly prepared, well read, and witty, intellectually curious, always moving… We pride ourselves on getting as little sleep as possible and thrive on self-deprivation. We drink coffee, a lot of it. We are on birth control, Prozac, and multivitamins… We are relentless, judgmental with ourselves, and forgiving to others. We never want to be as passive-aggressive as our mothers, never want to marry men as uninspired as our fathers… We are the daughters of the feminists who said, “You can be anything,” and we heard, “You have to be everything.
”
”
Courtney Martin
“
I left you there because I have never loved anything in my life like I love you. Not Isolde. Not the trade. Nothing.
”
”
Adrienne Young (Namesake (The World of the Narrows, #2))
“
Certain is it that there is no kind of affection so purely angelic as of a father to a daughter. In love to our wives there is desire; to our sons, ambition, but to our daughters there is something which there are no words to express.
”
”
Joseph Addison
“
When my daughter was a toddler, I used to take her to a park not far from our apartment. One day as she was playing in a sandbox, an ice-cream salesman approached us. I purchased her a treat, and when I turned to give it to her, I saw her mouth was full of sand. Where I had intended to put a delicacy, she had put dirt.
Did I love her with dirt in her mouth? Absolutely. Was she any less of my daughter with dirt in her mouth? Of course not. Was I going to allow her to keep the dirt in her mouth? No way. I loved her right where she was, but I refused to leave her there. I carried her over to the water fountain and washed out her mouth. Why? Because I love her.
God does the same for us. He holds us over the fountain. "Spit out the dirt, honey," our Father urges. "I've got something better for you." And so he cleanses us of filth; immorality, dishonesty, prejudice, bitterness, greed. We don't enjoy the cleansing; sometimes we even opt for the dirt over the ice cream. "I can eat dirt if I want to!" we pout and proclaim. Which is true—we can. But if we do, the loss is ours. God has a better offer.
”
”
Max Lucado (Just Like Jesus)
“
Tory a father isn’t supposed to fear his fourteen-year-old daughter. That being said, you terrify me.
”
”
Kathy Reichs (Seizure (Virals, #2))
“
The list of scars my students have sustained at the hand of your daughter grows longer each week. Poor Logan Hochspring's arm will forever carry an imprint of her dental records!"
"You bit him?" Lex's father said.
"He called me a wannabe vampire. What was I supposed to do?"
"Oh, I don't know--maybe not bite him?
”
”
Gina Damico (Croak (Croak, #1))
“
Who ever he is, I agree with your mother," said Dad as he entered the kitchen. "Stay away from him. Stay away from them all until you're of marrying age. Once you reach a nice, mature fifty-four, gentlemen callers will be welcomed here.
”
”
Sarah Rees Brennan (Unspoken (The Lynburn Legacy, #1))
“
There will be other lives.
There will be other lives for nervous boys with sweaty palms, for bittersweet fumblings in the backseats of cars, for caps and gowns in royal blue and crimson, for mothers clasping pretty pearl necklaces around daughters' unlined necks, for your full name read aloud in an auditorium, for brand-new suitcases transporting you to strange new people in strange new lands.
And there will be other lives for unpaid debts, for one-night stands, for Prague and Paris, for painful shoes with pointy toes, for indecision and revisions.
And there will be other lives for fathers walking daughters down aisles.
And there will be other lives for sweet babies with skin like milk.
And there will be other lives for a man you don't recognize, for a face in a mirror that is no longer yours, for the funerals of intimates, for shrinking, for teeth that fall out, for hair on your chin, for forgetting everything. Everything.
Oh, there are so many lives. How we wish we could live them concurrently instead of one by one by one. We could select the best pieces of each, stringing them together like a strand of pearls. But that's not how it works. A human's life is a beautiful mess.
”
”
Gabrielle Zevin (Elsewhere)
“
Those who deserve respect are given it freely. If one must demand such a thing, he’ll never truly command it. I am your daughter, not your horse, sir.”
I stepped closer, enjoying the way Father leaned away from me as if he were just now discovering that a cat, while precious and cute, also had sharp claws. “I’d rather be a lowly wretch on the streets than live in a house full of cages. Do not lecture me on propriety when it’s a virtue you so grossly lack.
”
”
Kerri Maniscalco (Stalking Jack the Ripper (Stalking Jack the Ripper, #1))
“
He taught me that there is no shame in breaking something, only in not being able to fix it.
”
”
Hope Jahren (Lab Girl)
“
How did we turn out the way we did when such horrible men raised us?” I wonder aloud.
“Because we are not our fathers. We saw what evil looked like, and we knew we wanted to be different.
”
”
Tricia Levenseller (Daughter of the Siren Queen (Daughter of the Pirate King, #2))
“
...I've made it my business to observe fathers and daughters. And I've seen some incredible, beautiful things. Like the little girl who's not very cute - her teeth are funny, and her hair doesn't grow right, and she's got on thick glasses - but her father holds her hand and walks with her like she's a tiny angel that no one can touch. He gives her the best gift a woman can get in this world: protection. And the little girl learns to trust the man in her life. And all the things that the world expects from women - to be beautiful, to soothe the troubled spirit, heal the sick, care for the dying, send the greeting card, bake the cake - allof those things become the way we pay the father back for protecting us...
”
”
Adriana Trigiani (Big Stone Gap (Big Stone Gap, #1))
“
Here's a secret: Everyone, if they live long enough, will lose their way at some point. You will lose your way, you will wake up one morning and find yourself lost. This is a hard, simple truth. If it hasn't happened to you yet, consider yourself lucky. When it does, when one day you look around and nothing is recognizable, when you find yourself alone in a dark wood having lost the way, you may find it easier to blame it on someone else -- an errant lover, a missing father, a bad childhood -- or it may be easier to blame the map you were given -- folded too many times, out-of-date, tiny print -- but mostly, if you are honest, you will only be able to blame yourself.
One day I'll tell my daughter a story about a dark time, the dark days before she was born, and how her coming was a ray of light. We got lost for a while, the story will begin, but then we found our way.
”
”
Nick Flynn (The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2009)
“
One of the best things a father can do for his daughter is let her know that she has met his expectations. My father did that for me, and no amount of effort on my part can fully repay the debt.
”
”
Lisa Wingate (Before We Were Yours)
“
But I want her to grow up knowing that I was the first man ever to fall in love with her. I'd always thought the father/daughter thing was overstated. But I can tell you, sometimes, she looks at me and I just become a puddle.
”
”
Randy Pausch (The Last Lecture)
“
Inej's mother and father might still shed tears for the daughter they'd lost, but if Inej died tonight, there would be no one to grieve for the girl she was now.
”
”
Leigh Bardugo (Six of Crows (Six of Crows, #1))
“
I finally understand why people get tattoos of those they have lost. The need to proclaim not merely the loss but the love, the continuity. I am my father’s daughter. It is an act of resistance and refusal: grief telling you it is over and your heart saying it is not; grief trying to shrink your love to the past and your heart saying it is present.
”
”
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (Notes on Grief)
“
There was a soft chuckle beside me, and my heart stopped.
"So this is Oberon's famous half-blood," Ash mused as I whirled around. His eyes, cold and inhuman, glimmered with amusement. Up close, he was even more beautiful, with high cheekbones and dark tousled hair falling into his eyes. My traitor hands itched, longing to run my fingers through those bangs. Horrified, I clenched them in my lap, trying to concentrate on what Ash was saying. "And to think," the prince continued, smiling, "I lost you that day in the forest and didn't even know what I was chasing."
I shrank back, eyeing Oberon and Queen Mab. They were deep in conversation and did not notice me. I didn't want to interrupt them simply because a prince of the Unseelie Court was talking to me.
Besides, I was a faery princess now. Even if I didn't quite believe it, Ash certainly did. I took a deep breath, raised my chin, and looked him straight in the eye.
"I warn you," I said, pleased that my voice didn't tremble, "that if you try anything, my father will remove your head and stick it to a plaque on his wall."
He shrugged one lean shoulder. "There are worse things." At my horrified look, he offered a faint, self-derogatory smile. "Don't worry, princess, I won't break the rules of Elysium. I have no intention of facing Mab's wrath should I embarrass her. That's not why I'm here."
"Then what do you want?"
He bowed. "A dance."
"What!" I stared at him in disbelief. "You tried to kill me!"
"Technically, I was trying to kill Puck. You just happened to be there. But yes, if I'd had the shot, I would have taken it."
"Then why the hell would you think I'd dance with you?"
"That was then." He regarded me blandly. "This is now. And it's tradition in Elysium that a son and daughter of opposite territories dance with each other, to demonstrate the goodwill between the courts."
"Well, it's a stupid tradition." I crossed my arms and glared. "And you can forget it. I am not going anywhere with you."
He raised an eyebrow. "Would you insult my monarch, Queen Mab, by refusing? She would take it very personally, and blame Oberon for the offense. And Mab can hold a grudge for a very, very long time."
Oh, damn. I was stuck.
”
”
Julie Kagawa (The Iron King (The Iron Fey, #1))
“
Daughter, we didn't need your note - or a prince's visit - to tell us you'd done nothing wrong. We know the daughter we raised. We fear for your future, but never for your character. You take our love and our trust wherever you wander.
Father.
”
”
Gail Carson Levine (Fairest)
“
If I could give you one thought, it would be to lift someone up. Lift a stranger up--lift her up. I would ask you, mother and father, brother and sister, lovers, mother and daughter, father and son, lift someone. The very idea of lifting someone up will lift you, as well.
”
”
Maya Angelou
“
I wake sometimes in the dark terrified by my life's precariousness, its thready breath. Beside me, my husband's pulse beats at his throat; in their beds, my children's skin shows every faintest scratch. A breeze would blow them over, and the world is filled with more than breezes: diseases and disasters, monsters and pain in a thousand variations. I do not forget either my father and his kind hanging over us, bright and sharp as swords, aimed at our tearing flesh. If they do not fall on us in spite and malice, then they will fall by accident or whim. My breath fights in my throat. How can I live on beneath such a burden of doom? I rise then and go to my herbs. I create something, I transform something. My witchcraft is as strong as ever, stronger. This too is good fortune. How many have such power and leisure and defense as I do? Telemachus comes from our bed to find me. He sits with me in the greensmelling darkness, holding my hand. Our faces are both lined now, marked with our years. Circe, he says, it will be all right. It is not the saying of an oracle or a prophet. They are words you might speak to a child. I have heard him say them to our daughters, when he rocked them back to sleep from a nightmare, when he dressed their small cuts, soothed whatever stung. His skin is familiar as my own beneath my fingers. I listen to his breath, warm upon the night air, and somehow I am comforted. He does not mean it does not hurt. He does not mean we are not frightened. Only that: we are here. This is what it means to swim in the tide, to walk the earth and feel it touch your feet. This is what it means to be alive.
”
”
Madeline Miller (Circe)
“
You should have called us. Desmond would have picked you up.'
'No I wouldn't,' Valkyrie's dad said, stepping into earshot. 'Sorry, Fletcher, but I had important fatherly duties to take care of, which included eating breakfast, showering, and finding my trousers. Of those three, I only managed two. Without looking down, can you guess which one I missed?'... Fletcher smiled back. 'I just want to borrow Stephanie for a moment.'
'Take our daughter,' Valkryie's dad said, waving a hand airily. 'We have another one now.
”
”
Derek Landy (Death Bringer (Skulduggery Pleasant, #6))
“
He once thought it himself, that he might die with grief: for his wife, his daughters, his sisters, his father and master the cardinal. But pulse, obdurate, keeps its rhythm. You think you cannot keep breathing, but your ribcage has other ideas, rising and falling, emitting sighs. You must thrive in spite of yourself; and so that you may do it, God takes out your heart of flesh, and gives you a heart of stone.
”
”
Hilary Mantel (Bring Up the Bodies (Thomas Cromwell, #2))
“
My dad’s contentment is all that matters to me. When he’s laughing, I’m laughing. When he’s happy, I’m happy. I would give up my soul for him. To me, nothing else but his happiness matters.
”
”
Rebecah McManus (Colliding Worlds)
“
Invest in what's real. Clean as you go. Drink while you cook. Make it fun. It doesn't have to be complicated. It will be what it will be.
”
”
Gwyneth Paltrow (My Father's Daughter: Delicious, Easy Recipes Celebrating Family & Togetherness)
“
She reached out and touched the bright colors of the cashmere scarf, her face filled with wonder as much as shock. "This . . .this is Ibrahim's scarf . . .it's a family heirloom. . . "
"No, it belongs to this mobster guy named Abe. . .
[...]
"Mom," I said disbelievingly. "You know Abe."
"Yes, Rose. I know him."
"Please don't tell me. . ."
Oh, man. Why couldn't I have been an illegitimate half-royal like Robert Doru? Or even the mail-man's daughter?
"Please don't tell me Abe is my father. . . . "
She didn't have to tell me. It was all over her face.
"Oh God, " I said. "I'm Zmey's daughter. Zmey Junior. Zmeyette, even."
That got her attention. She looked up at me. "What on earth are you talking about?"
"Nothing," I said.
”
”
Richelle Mead (Blood Promise (Vampire Academy, #4))
“
In my heart I know the truth, but my mind cannot accept the reality of what this all means.
”
”
Loung Ung (First They Killed My Father: A Daughter of Cambodia Remembers)
“
When I was twenty-something, I asked my father, “When did you start feeling like a grownup?” His response: “Never.
”
”
Shannon Celebi
“
Well, are you ready, Lada Dragwlya, daughter of the dragon?" Fire burned in her heart, and her wounded soul spread out, casting a shadow like wings across her country. This was hers. Not because of her father. Not because of Mehmed. Because the land itself had claimed her as its own. "Not Dragwlya," she said. "Lada Dracul. I am no longer the daughter of the dragon." She lifted her chin, sights set on the horizon. "I am the dragon.
”
”
Kiersten White (And I Darken (The Conqueror's Saga, #1))
“
I know that throughout my life I have struggled to forgive my father. Now, as I get older, I wish most of all that he had been able to find a way to forgive himself.
”
”
Madeleine Thien (Do Not Say We Have Nothing)
“
Most of the time, it felt like my father and I were completely different species. Possibly literally, depending on the day and whether or not I actually qualified as human at the time.
”
”
Jennifer Lynn Barnes (Every Other Day)
“
Our parts now -- which perforce we must play -- are not father and daughter, but one old Abhorsen, making way for the new. But behind this, there is always my love.
”
”
Garth Nix (Sabriel (Abhorsen, #1))
“
ONCE UPON A time, there was a king who had three beautiful daughters. He loved each of them dearly. One day, when the young ladies were of age to be married, a terrible, three-headed dragon laid siege to the kingdom, burning villages with fiery breath. It spoiled crops and burned churches. It killed babies, old people, and everyone in between.
The king promised a princess’s hand in marriage to whoever slayed the dragon. Heroes and warriors came in suits of armor, riding brave horses and bearing swords and arrows.
One by one, these men were slaughtered and eaten.
Finally the king reasoned that a maiden might melt the dragon’s heart and succeed where warriors had failed. He sent his eldest daughter to beg the dragon for mercy, but the dragon listened to not a word of her pleas. It swallowed her whole.
Then the king sent his second daughter to beg the dragon for mercy, but the dragon did the same. Swallowed her before she could get a word out.
The king then sent his youngest daughter to beg the dragon for mercy, and she was so lovely and clever that he was sure she would succeed where the others had perished.
No indeed. The dragon simply ate her.
The king was left aching with regret. He was now alone in the world.
Now, let me ask you this. Who killed the girls?
The dragon? Or their father?
”
”
E. Lockhart (We Were Liars)
“
It is a father’s job to love his daughter in the way that she needs to be loved.
”
”
Karin Slaughter (The Good Daughter (The Good Daughter, #1))
“
Dead flesh and sharpened scalpels didn't bother me. I was my father's daughter, after all. My nightmares were made of darker things.
”
”
Megan Shepherd (The Madman's Daughter (The Madman's Daughter, #1))
“
It must be a hard thing, to be a father; living in fear that your daughter would meet a boy she liked, but also having to worry if she didn't.
”
”
Stephenie Meyer (Twilight (The Twilight Saga, #1))
“
Every child grows up thinking their father is a hero or villain until they are old enough to realize that he is just a man
”
”
Mark Maish
“
A father's feelings are sometimes unspoken, his fears and tears can be hidden, but his love is deeper than the ocean.
”
”
Mouloud Benzadi
“
It was like we were exchanging codes, on how to be a father and a daughter, like we'd read about it in a manual, translated from another language, and were doing our best with what we could understand.
”
”
Aimee Bender (The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake)
“
She liked to imagine him stealing a glimpse of her over the backyard fence, proudly watching his strange daughter daydream under the beech tree.
Blue was awfully fond of her father, considering she'd never met him.
”
”
Maggie Stiefvater (The Raven Boys (The Raven Cycle, #1))
“
i can't tell if my mother is
terrified or in love with
my father it all
looks the same
i flinch when you touch me
i fear it is him
”
”
Rupi Kaur (Milk and honey)
“
Father has a strengthening character like the sun and mother has a soothing temper like the moon.
”
”
Amit Kalantri (Wealth of Words)
“
It's too late. Seventeen-year-olds don't need fathers.
Oh god. I'm thirty-four years old and I need a father. I can't even begin to think what my daughter needs.
”
”
Melina Marchetta (Looking for Alibrandi)
“
He still didn't think I was good enough for you."
"No father thinks any man is good enough for his daughter.
”
”
Nicholas Sparks (The Longest Ride)
“
Why can’t I be like that? Why can’t I be the father who just shrugs off the love of his daughter? Why can’t I be the Lead Inquisitor who enjoys watching his pleading victims burn at the stake? Why can’t I be the one who befriends a lonely, lost girl and then casts her out? Why can’t I be the one to strike first, to hit so early and with such fury that my enemies cower before they can ever think of turning on me? What is so great about being good?
”
”
Marie Lu (The Rose Society (The Young Elites, #2))
“
Lada looked up into her father's eyes, deep-set and etched with years of cunning and cruelty. She nodded, then held out her hand. "The daughter of Wallachia wants her knife back."
Vlad smiled and gave it to her.
”
”
Kiersten White (And I Darken (The Conqueror's Saga, #1))
“
You sure you want to cross me?"
In that moment she's her father's daughter.
”
”
Holly Black (Red Glove (Curse Workers, #2))
“
I'm half of my father. Half of my hero. And I am half of my mother. Half soft sighs and half sharp edges. And if they can be Carmindor and Amara--then somewhere in my blood and bones I can be too. I'm the lost princess. I'm the villain of my story, and the hero. Part of my mom and part of my dad. I am a fact of the universe. The Possible and the Impossible. I am not no one. I am my parents' daughter, and then I realize--I realize that in this universe they're alive too. They're alive through me. Fashioning my hands into a pistol, I point it at the ceiling, lifting my chin, raising my eyes against the blinding stage lights, and I ignite the stars.
”
”
Ashley Poston (Geekerella (Once Upon a Con, #1))
“
It is important to note that research has shown that men who have abusive mothers do not tend to develop especially negative attitudes toward females, but men who have abusive fathers do; the disrespect that abusive men show their female partners and their daughters is often absorbed by their sons.
So while a small number of abusive men do hate women, the great majority exhibit a more subtle—though often quite pervasive—sense of superiority or contempt toward females, and some don’t show any obvious signs of problems with women at all until they are in a serious relationship.
”
”
Lundy Bancroft (Why Does He Do That? Inside the Minds of Angry and Controlling Men)
“
It is a known fact that every man's heart is set on having a daughter.
”
”
Françoise Sagan (Dans un mois, dans un an)
“
Helen slowly became aware of an unnerving red light. She lifted her head and looked around. The glow bounced off the cold stone walls and intensified quickly. It filled her with thoughts of despair and hopelessness. She tried to shake them off.
You have what’s mine! Where is it? I want it!
Helen shuddered violently. She recalled the inner voice that urged
her to use the stone to keep Prince Harnak from dying. That voice was
comforting and encouraging. This voice was oppressive and angry and
beat on her relentlessly.
“No!” she muttered. “Go away. I have nothing for you or anyone
else, not even me.”
The red light flickered out. Only the numbing cold and her utter
isolation, cheerless companions, remained.
”
”
Candace L. Talmadge (Stoneslayer: Book One Scandal)
“
When Enebeli Okwara sent his girl out in the world, he did not know what the world did to daughters. He did not know how quickly it would wick the dew off her, how she would be returned to him hollowed out, relieved of her better parts.
”
”
Lesley Nneka Arimah (What It Means When a Man Falls from the Sky)
“
the harsh truth of every relationship, even between those who love each other, like fathers and sons and daughters, or husbands and wives, is that the love is always unequal.
”
”
Karl Taro Greenfeld (Triburbia)
“
Jesus can always reject his father,
But he cannot escape his mother's blood.
He'll scream and try to wash it off of his fingers,
But he'll never escape what he's made up of.
”
”
Ethel Cain
“
For a flicker of a moment I imagined a world completely different from the one I'd always known, a world in which I was treated with fairness, even kindness-- a world in which fathers didn't sell their daughters.
”
”
Arthur Golden
“
The soul in its nature loves God and longs to be at one with Him in the noble love of a daughter for a noble father; but coming to human birth and lured by the courtships of this sphere, she takes up with another love, a mortal, leaves her father and falls.
”
”
Plotinus (The Enneads)
“
But fathers often underestimate their daughters, don’t they?
”
”
Rebecca Ross (Dreams Lie Beneath)
“
The greatest thing a father can do for his daughter is to love her mother.
”
”
Elaine S. Dalton
“
Time heals nothing. Wounds fester and ooze. Life drags you by a rope over rocks and stones and one day you look up, look back, and see you've been used to cut a path, mark a trail.
”
”
Bob Thurber (Nothing But Trouble)
“
We must avoid possession," he said. "But, oh, let me kiss you.
”
”
Anaïs Nin
“
Galen Werner, you may choose one of my daughters to be your bride, and when I die, you shall sit beside her as co-ruler of Westfallin."
"Your Majesty.... I - I don't know - "
Rose felt her knees shaking. Did he not love her after all?
"Psst, Galen?" Pansy tugged on his arm. Galen leaned down. "If Rose doesn't want you," the little girl whispered loudly, "you can marry me."
Galen laughed shakily. "Thanks, Pansy."
"Oh, Rose! Don't just stand there like a lump," Poppy said, poking her in the back. "If he's too embarrased, you should be the one to say something."
"Poppy!" Daisy looked scandalized. "It's not Rose's place to - "
Under cover of their squabbling, Rose took Galen's hand and moved closer to him. "Do you want to marry me?" she whispered in a much quieter tone than Pansy had used.
"Yes," he said.
"If neither of you is going to speak up," King Gregor said, "I shall simply have to decide it for myself!"
"Father," Rose protested, "that won't be necessary!"
"I choose Rose," Galen blurted out at the same time.
"There. Done. Easy." King Gregor clapped his hands.
”
”
Jessica Day George (Princess of the Midnight Ball (The Princesses of Westfalin Trilogy, #1))
“
The guard hit Kestrel across the face. “I said, what did you give him?”
You had a warrior’s heart, even then.
Kestrel spat blood. “Nothing,” she told the guard. She thought of her father, she thought of Arin. She told her final lie. “I gave him nothing.
”
”
Marie Rutkoski (The Winner's Crime (The Winner's Trilogy, #2))
“
We want thing we cannot have. We seek to reclaim a certain moment , sound, sensation. I want to hear my mother's voice. I want to see my children as children. Hands small, feet swift. Everything changes. Boy grown, father dead, daughter taller than me, weeping from a bad dream. Please stay forever, I say to the things I know. Don't go. Don't grow.
”
”
Patti Smith (M Train)
“
I shadowed my father a million times before, watching him sneak off to the outskirts, but it never occurred to me to follow my mother—that she would have a life of her own.
”
”
Kim Liggett (The Grace Year)
“
A man's daughter is his heart. Just with feet, walking out in the world.
”
”
Mat Johnson (Loving Day)
“
I cannot heave my heart into my mouth. I love your majesty according to my bond; no more no less.
”
”
William Shakespeare (King Lear)
“
Your father thought he scored a victory over me when he tricked me into marrying you instead of one of your sisters, but he unwittingly gave me the one daughter I wanted most.
”
”
C.L. Wilson (The Winter King (Weathermages of Mystral, #1))
“
He is your Father, and His role is to protect you; He will comfort you and guide you. He will feed you; He will carry you when you are weak. He will seek you out when you go astray; He will help you in times of trouble. He will not let your enemies go unpunished; He will cherish you like a father cherishes his daughter. When you fall, He will pick you up; when you don’t understand, He will always understand.
When you feel like life is weighing you down, He will lift you up. When you feel like giving up, He will encourage you to keep going. When you are sad, He will lighten your spirits. When you need advice, His line is open 24-7. When you feel unsafe, He will be your safety; when you are worried, He will be an ear to your concerns. When you feel burdened, offer your burden to Him and He will take it. Where you have been burnt, He will make you beautiful; where you hurt, He will heal. Whenever you feel lonely, He will always be with you.
Where others have not supported you, He will support you. When you feel discouraged, He will be your encouragement. Where you don’t know, He will tell you when the time is right. When you feel unloved, remember that He has always loved you.
You see limitations; God sees opportunities. You see faults; God sees growth. You see problems; God sees solutions. You see limitations; God sees possibilities. You see life; God sees eternity.
”
”
Corallie Buchanan (Watch Out! Godly Women on the Loose)
“
You are your father's daughter,' he said, the skin around his eyes tightening. 'Trent is his father's son. Apart, you are annoying. Together...you have the potential to be a problem.
”
”
Kim Harrison (The Good, the Bad, and the Undead (The Hollows, #2))
“
There is pride, too, though—pride that he has done it alone. That his daughter is so curious, so resilient. There is the humility of being a father to someone so powerful, as if he were only a narrow conduit for another, greater thing. That’s how it feels right now, he thinks, kneeling beside her, rinsing her hair: as though his love for his daughter will outstrip the limits of his body. The walls could fall away, even the whole city, and the brightness of that feeling would not wane. The drain moans; the cluttered house crowds in close.
”
”
Anthony Doerr (All the Light We Cannot See)
“
I had a daddy, didn't I? He wasn't perfect and he certainly wasn't the one I'd dreamed he would have been, but I had one all the same. And I'd love him as much as I'd hated him, hadn't I? All that distance, all that time wasted, but the fact that he'd inspired such passion in me meant something in itself. I can honestly say now that I think that's special. Screwed up and turned inside out, we were special him and me, and I am so thankful that I can say that I had a daddy and that he mattered. All his faults and failures mean nothing to me now.
”
”
Melodie Ramone (After Forever Ends)
“
Without you, African mother, there would have been no us--African fathers, sons and daughters. Do we need to say any more African mothers, our own true goddesses! Let us praise you to the highest, telling the world about your righteousness. Let us tell the entire universe about your sacredness African woman.
”
”
Yosef A.A. Ben-Jochannan
“
Very few people get a chance to quantify how much their father loves them. But I did. The job should have taken forty-five minutes, but Dad spent three and a half hours on it. My father loves me 366 percent more than he loves anything else. Good to know.
”
”
Andy Weir (Artemis)
“
Balt Van Tassel was an easy indulgent soul; he loved his daughter better even than his pipe, and, like a reasonable man and an excellent father, let her have her way in everything.
”
”
Washington Irving (The Legend of Sleepy Hollow)
“
That first scream, my lord, was indeed your daughter, my wife, and if you kill me, your grandchild will be quite without a father. Won't you come in?
”
”
Deeanne Gist (A Bride Most Begrudging)
“
History may have condemned him many times over for being a weak and reactionary tsar, but he was, without doubt, the most exemplary of royal fathers.
”
”
Helen Rappaport (The Romanov Sisters: The Lost Lives of the Daughters of Nicholas and Alexandra (The Romanov Sisters #2))
“
Father is close, Mother is close, but neither is as close as Chairman Mao.
”
”
Jung Chang (Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China)
“
This was another of our fears: that Life wouldn't turn out to be like Literature. Look at our parents--were they the stuff of Literature? At best, they might aspire to the condition of onlookers and bystanders, part of a social backdrop against which real, true, important things could happen. Like what? The things Literature was about: Love, sex, morality, friendship, happiness, suffering, betrayal, adultery, good and evil, heroes and villains, guilt and innocence, ambition, power, justice, revolution, war, fathers and sons, mothers and daughters, the individual against society, success and failure, murder, suicide, death, God.
”
”
Julian Barnes (The Sense of an Ending)
“
Darling Daddy,
This is Rose.
The shed needs new wires now it has blown up.
Caddy is bringing home rock-bottom boyfriends to see if they will do for Mummy. Instead of you.
Love, Rose.
”
”
Hilary McKay (Indigo's Star (Casson Family, #2))
“
What happens to the mind after bereavement makes no sense until later... what the mind does after losing one's father isn't just to pick new fathers from the world, but pick new selves to love them with.
”
”
Helen Macdonald
“
But love isn't just about feeling good. It's about doing what you don't want to do, over and over again, if it needs to be done, for the sake of someone else. Love is really about self-sacrifice.
”
”
Meg Meeker (Strong Fathers, Strong Daughters: 10 Secrets Every Father Should Know)
“
Marie-Laure smiles, and he laughs a pure, contagious laugh, one she will try to remember all her life, father and daughter turning in circles on the sidewalk in front of their apartment house, laughing together while snow sifts through the branches above.
”
”
Anthony Doerr (All the Light We Cannot See)
“
The horror of incest is not in the sexual act. but in the exploitation of children and the corruption of parental love. p4
”
”
Judith Lewis Herman (Father-Daughter Incest (with a new Afterword))
“
My father had bought him a shirt
that said “Sure you can date my daughter. In a completely unrelated topic,
have you seen my shotgun?
”
”
Tara Sivec (Futures and Frosting (Chocolate Lovers, #2))
“
All her young life she has tried to please her father, never quite realizing that, as a girl, she never could.
”
”
Alice Walker
“
Accept the fact that girls squeal when they're happy or confused or excited or scared or because they just saw a certain boy in line.
”
”
Harry H. Harrison Jr. (Father to Daughter: Life Lessons on Raising a Girl)
“
Not all sons were like their fathers. A son chose the man he would be.
Not all daughters were like their fathers. A daughter monster chose the monster she would be.
”
”
Kristin Cashore (Fire (Graceling Realm, #2))
“
War seems like a fine adventure, the greatest most of them will ever know. Then they get a taste of battle.
For some, that one taste is enough to break them. Others go on for years, until they lose count of all the battles they have fought in, but even a man who has survived a hundred fights can break in his hundred-and-first. Brothers watch their brothers die, fathers lose their sons, friends see their friends trying to hold their entrails in after they’ve been gutted by an axe.
They see the lord who led them there cut down, and some other lord shouts that they are his now, They take the wound, and when that’s still half-healed they take another. There is never enough to eat, their shoes fall to pieces from marching, their clothes are torn and rotting, and half of them are shitting in their breeches from drinking bad water.
If they want new boots or a warmer cloak or maybe a rusted iron half helm, they need to take them from a corpse, and before long they are stealing from the living too, from the small folk whose land they’re fighting in, men very like the men they used to be. They slaughter their sheep and steal their chickens, and from there it’s just a short step to carrying off their daughters too. And one day they look around and realize all their friends and kin are gone, that they are fighting beside strangers beneath a banner that they hardly recognize. They don’t know where they are or how to get back home and the lord they’re fighting for does not know their names, yet here he comes, shouting for them to form up, to make a line with their spears and scythes and sharpened hoes, to stand their ground. And the knights come down on them, faceless men clad in all steel, and the iron thunder of their charge seems to fill the world.
And the man breaks.
”
”
George R.R. Martin (A Feast for Crows (A Song of Ice and Fire, #4))
“
Dads. It’s time to show our sons how to properly treat a woman. It’s time to show our daughters how a girl should expect be treated. It’s time to show forgiveness and compassion. It’s time to show our children empathy. It’s time to break social norms and teach a healthier way of life! It’s time to teach good gender roles and to ditch the unnecessary ones. Does it really matter if your son likes the color pink? Is it going to hurt anybody? Do you not see the damage it inflicts to tell a boy that there is something wrong with him because he likes a certain color? Do we not see the damage we do in labeling our girls “tom boys” or our boys “feminine” just because they have their own likes and opinions on things? Things that really don’t matter?
”
”
Dan Pearce (Single Dad Laughing: The Best of Year One)
“
How as a young girl, Ismat Chugtai convinced her father to excuse her from learning how to cook, and give her instead the opportunity to go to school and get an education:
“Women cook food Ismat. When you go to your in-laws what will you feed them?” he asked gently after the crisis was explained to him.
“If my husband is poor, then we will make khichdi and eat it and if he is rich, we will hire a cook,” I answered.
My father realised his daughter was a terror and that there wasn’t a thing he could do about it.
”
”
Ismat Chughtai
“
You know, I've kinda been freaking out over being a father, but then I read in a men's magazine somewhere that as long as you can keep your son off the pipe and your daughter off the pole, that you've done a good job.
”
”
Jillian Dodd (That Wedding (That Boy, #2))
“
Betrayal is too kind a word to describe a situation in which a father says he loves his daughter but claims he must teach her about the horrors of the world in order to make her a stronger person; a situation in which he watches or participates in rituals that make her feel like she is going to die. She experiences pain that is so intense that she cannot think; her head spins so fast she can't remember who she is or how she got there.
All she knows is pain. All she feels is desperation. She tries to cry out for help, but soon learns that no one will listen. No matter how loud she cries, she can't stop or change what is happening. No matter what she does, the pain will not stop. Her father orders her to be tortured and tells her it is for her own good. He tells her that she needs the discipline, or that she has asked for it by her misbehavior. Betrayal is too simple a word to describe the overwhelming pain, the overwhelming loneliness and isolation this child experiences.
As if the abuse during the rituals were not enough, this child experiences similar abuse at home on a daily basis. When she tries to talk about her pain, she is told that she must be crazy. "Nothing bad has happened to you;' her family tells her Each day she begins to feel more and more like she doesn't know what is real. She stops trusting her own feelings because no one else acknowledges them or hears her agony. Soon the pain becomes too great. She learns not to feel at all. This strong, lonely, desperate child learns to give up the senses that make all people feel alive. She begins to feel dead.
She wishes she were dead. For her there is no way out. She soon learns there is no hope.
As she grows older she gets stronger. She learns to do what she is told with the utmost compliance. She forgets everything she has ever wanted. The pain still lurks, but it's easier to pretend it's not there than to acknowledge the horrors she has buried in the deepest parts of her mind. Her relationships are overwhelmed by the power of her emotions. She reaches out for help, but never seems to find what she is looking for The pain gets worse. The loneliness sets in. When the feelings return, she is overcome with panic, pain, and desperation.
She is convinced she is going to die. Yet, when she looks around her she sees nothing that should make her feel so bad. Deep inside she knows something is very, very wrong, but she doesn't remember anything. She thinks, "Maybe I am crazy.
”
”
Margaret Smith (Ritual Abuse: What It Is, Why It Happens, and How to Help)
“
Dad!” I said, trying to get his attention. “It is so official you are a bad father. Good fathers do not shoot their daughters!”
I crossed my arms and brought out the big guns. “I am so telling Mom when I die.
”
”
Darynda Jones (Fourth Grave Beneath My Feet (Charley Davidson, #4))
“
She remembered how she had felt cleaning out her father's clothes, wanting at once to hold on to every dirty handkerchief and musty page of sheet much, and yet wishing she were anywhere else on earth, free of it all.
”
”
J. Courtney Sullivan (The Engagements)
“
Well, sir, do you mean to remain there, commending my father’s taste in wine, or do you mean to accompany me to Ashtead?”
“Set off for Ashtead at this hour, when I have been traveling for two days?” said Sir Horace. “Now, do, my boy, have a little common sense! Why should I?”
“I imagine that your parental feeling, sir, must provide you with the answer! If it does not, so be it! I am leaving immediately!”
“What do you mean to do when you reach Lacy Manor?” asked Sir Horace, regarding him in some amusement.
“Wring Sophy’s neck!” said Mr. Rivenhall savagely.
“Well, you don’t need my help for that, my dear boy!” said Sir Horace, settling himself more comfortably in his chair.
”
”
Georgette Heyer (The Grand Sophy)
“
The truth now. He was disappointed in human beings. He had seen too many betrayals, too many pitiful weaknesses, too much greed for money and fame. The falseness between lovers, husbands and wifes, fathers, sons, mothers, daughters
”
”
Mario Puzo (The Last Don)
“
From Alan Lightman's intricate 1993 novel Einstein's Dreams; set in Berne in 1905: With infinite life comes an infinite list of relatives. Grandparents never die, nor do great-grandparents, great-aunts...and so on, back through the generations, all alive and offering advice. Sons never escape from the shadows of their fathers. Nor do daughters of their mothers. No one ever comes into his own...Such is the cost of immortality. No person is whole. No person is free.
”
”
Christopher Hitchens (Mortality)
“
One of the things I am very aware of not having in my life is the love of my father. ...but I know now that it is hard to make up that loss in the life of a daughter.
It's your dad who tells you that you are beautiful.
Its your dad who picks you up over his head and carries you on his shoulders.
It's your did who will fight the monsters under your bed.
It's your dad who tells you that you are worth a lot, so don't settle for the first guy who tells you you're pretty.
”
”
Sheila Walsh (Let Go: Live Free of the Burdens All Women Know)
“
She went to him. “Atticus,” she said. “I’m—” “You may be sorry, but I’m proud of you.” She looked up and saw her father beaming at her. “What?” “I said I’m proud of you.” “I don’t understand you. I don’t understand men at all and I never will.” “Well, I certainly hoped a daughter of mine’d hold her ground for what she thinks is right—stand up to me first of all.
”
”
Harper Lee (Go Set a Watchman)
“
Men live by rules they've made for themselves. And among those rules is one specifying that women are merely commodities for men to possess. A daughter belongs to her father, a wife to her husband. A woman's own desires present obstacles for men and are best ignored.
”
”
Natsuo Kirino (Grotesque)
“
i was raped, too
sexually assaulted in seventh grade,
tenth grade. the summer after graduation,
at a party
i was 16
i was 14
i was 5 and he did it for three years
i loved him
i didn't even know him
he was my best friend's brother,
my grandfather, father, mommy's boyfriend, my date, my cousin, my coach
i met him for the first time that night and-
4 guys took turns, and-
i'm a boy and this happened to me, and-
...i got pregnant i gave up my daughter for adoption... did it happen to you, too?
”
”
Laurie Halse Anderson (Speak)
“
I’m washed, I’m forgiven, I’m whole, and I’m healed. I’m cleansed and I’m glory bound. I am only a sojourner on the earth. I am but a pilgrim on this planet, on my way to perfection, and I don’t need anybody to tell me who I am, because I know who I am. I am a child of the King, a son (or daughter) of God, born again through Jesus Christ, bought with the price of His blood. I am a new creation, totally new, thoroughly loved and completely accepted as a child of my Father, precious in His sight.
”
”
Myles Munroe (The Purpose and Power of Love & Marriage)
“
Since I’ve been home I’ve been trying hard to mend my relationship with my mother. Asking her to do things for me instead of brushing aside any offer of help, as I did for years out of anger. Letting her handle all the money I won. Returning her hugs instead of tolerating them. My time in the arena made me realize how I needed to stop punishing her for something she couldn’t help, specifically the crushing depression she fell into after my father’s death. Because sometimes things happen to people and they’re not equipped to deal with them.
”
”
Suzanne Collins (Catching Fire (The Hunger Games, #2))
“
She serves me a piece of it a few minutes
out of the oven. A little steam rises
from the slits on top. Sugar and spice -
cinnamon - burned into the crust.
But she's wearing these dark glasses
in the kitchen at ten o'clock
in the morning - everything nice -
as she watches me break off
a piece, bring it to my mouth,
and blow on it. My daughter's kitchen,
in winter. I fork the pie in
and tell myself to stay out of it.
She says she loves him. No way
could it be worse.
”
”
Raymond Carver
“
He’d also agreed to be betrothed to the Archduke of Varsha’s daughter, a girl of nine who had evidently impressed him a great deal by being able to spit across a garden plot. I was a little dubious about this as a foundation for marriage, but I suppose it wasn’t much worse than marrying her because her father might have stirred up rebellion, otherwise.
”
”
Naomi Novik (Uprooted)
“
For time and eternity there have been fathers like Nathan who simply can see no way to have a daughter but to own her like a plot of land. To work her, plow her under, rain down a dreadful poison upon her. Miraculously, it causes these girls to grow. They elongate on the pale slender stalks of their longing, like sunflowers with heavy heads. You can shield them with your body and soul, trying to absorb that awful rain, but they'll still move toward him. Without cease they'll bend to his light.
”
”
Barbara Kingsolver (The Poisonwood Bible)
“
Papa, do you like my new friend?" Frances Catherine asked when they were halfway across the field.
"I surely do."
"Can I keep her?"
"For the love of...No, you can't keep her. She isn't a puppy. You can be her friend, though," he hastily added before his daughter could argue with him.
"Forever, papa?"
She 'd asked her father that question, but Judith answered her. "Forever," she shyly whispered.
Frances Catherine reached across her father's chest to take hold of Judith's hand. "Forever," she pledged.
”
”
Julie Garwood (The Secret (Highlands' Lairds, #1))
“
If Rosie’s mother had known that eye colour was not a reliable indicator of paternity, and organised a DNA test to confirm her suspicions, there would have been no Father Project, no Great Cocktail Night, no New York Adventure, no Reform Don Project—and no Rosie Project. Had it not been for this unscheduled series of events, her daughter and I would not have fallen in love. And I would still be eating lobster every Tuesday night.
Incredible.
”
”
Graeme Simsion (The Rosie Project (Don Tillman, #1))
“
I think about how truly interesting and odd it is that when a woman marries, traditionally she loses her name, becoming absorbed by the husband's family name - she is in effect lost, evaporated from all records under her maiden name. I finally understand the anger behind feminism - the idea that as a woman you are property to be conveyed between your father and your husband, but never an individual who exists independently. And on the flip side, it is also one of the few ways one can legitimately get lost - no one questions it.
”
”
A.M. Homes (The Mistress's Daughter)
“
That night, the Raka conspirators had plenty of news to report, particularly Ochobu. Aly had not known that the mages of the Chain had been laboring to eliminate any mages who had worked magic on the Crown’s behalf. So far they had killed seven of the most powerful.
Chelaol would call this count of the dead another ‘good start,’ Aly thought grimly. This crude business of counting up lives taken struck her as a bad idea. It took the horror from death. When Ochobu named four mages on Lombyn who had had been killed in the streets of their towns, it had been about numbers, not lives.
Maybe this is how you become a Rittevon, she thought. You get used to the dead being described as numbers, not fathers or daughters or grandparents.
She turned to Dove when Ochobu finished, 'don’t ever be like this,' she urged. 'don’t think that it doesn’t matter if you only hear of murder as a number. If you keep it at a distance.
”
”
Tamora Pierce (Trickster's Queen (Daughter of the Lioness, #2))
“
Will,
Thank you for taking on the role of father to my little boy.
Thank you for loving my daughter as much as I love her.
But most of all, thank you in advance for being the best father I could ever hope for a grandchild of mine to have. Because I know without a doubt that you will be.
Congratulations,
Julia
”
”
Colleen Hoover (This Girl (Slammed, #3))
“
Destiny. To believe that a life is meant for a single purpose, one must also believe in a common fate. Father to daughter, brother to sister, mother to child. Blood ties can be as unyielding as they are eternal. But it is our bonds of choice that truly light the road we travel. Love versus hatred. Loyalty against betrayal. A person's true destiny can only be revealed at the end of his journey, and the story I have to tell is far from over.
”
”
Emily Thorne
“
Understand, daughter, that the only reason for your existing was as a tribute to your uncle-father. You were meant to love him. I planned to teach you how to serve him and adore him. You would be his monument and his fortress against mortality.
Forgive me. As soon as you arrived I realized that you were worth far more than that.
”
”
Katherine Dunn (Geek Love)
“
Her voice, high and clear, moved through the leaves, through the sunlight. It splashed onto the gravel, the grass. He imagined the notes falling into the air like stones into water, rippling the invisible surface of the world. Waves of sound, waves of light: his father had tried to pin everything down, but the world was fluid and could not be contained.
”
”
Kim Edwards (The Memory Keeper's Daughter)
“
I am a soldier, I've been a soldier since I was a child.
Would you have a girl who has spent her life down in the trenches of battle wear a crown? Would you have a soldier queen?
I am a Squaller, a Grisha. Some of our enemies will call me a witch. And some of our own people will agree.
Will you have a Grisha queen?
My father's name was Suhm Nabri, and I am his only daughter. Will you have a Suli queen?
”
”
Leigh Bardugo (Rule of Wolves (King of Scars, #2))
“
O Father God, I know nothing is impossible for You. I am not putting my faith in anything but You — not the money in my purse, nor my status as the daughter of a duke, not in Colin’s ability to protect me, nor even in myself. My faith is in You. You are mighty to save, and I will not waver in my faith. I know You care for me, and nothing is too hard for You.
”
”
Melanie Dickerson (The Princess Spy (Hagenheim #5))
“
Here we were, Father and I, shut up in a plain little room, and for the first time in my life having something that might pass for a conversation. We were talking to one another almost like adults; almost like one human being to another; almost like father and daughter. And even though I couldn't think of anything to say, I felt myself wanting it to go on and on until the last star blinked out.
”
”
Alan Bradley (The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie (Flavia de Luce, #1))
“
Once upon a time, before chimaera and seraphim, there was the sun and the moons. The sun was betrothed to Nitid, the bright sister, but it was demure Ellai, always hiding behind her bold sister, who stirred his lust. He contrived upon her bathing in the sea and he took her. She struggled, but he was the sun, and he thought he should have what he wanted. Ellai stabbed him and escaped, and the blood of the sun flew like sparks to earth, where it became seraphim- misbegotten children of fire. And like their father, they believed it their due to want, and take, and have.
As for Ellai, she told her sister what had passed, and Nitid wept, and her tears fell to earth and became chimeara, children of regret.
When the sun came again to the sisters, neither would have him. Nitid put Ellai behind her and protected her, though the sun, still bleeding sparks, knew Ellai was not as defenseless as she seemed. He plead with Nitid to forgive him but she refused, and to this day he follows the sisters across the sky, wanting and wanting and never having, and that will be his punishment, forever.
Nitid is the goddess of tears and life, hunts and war, and her temples are too many to count. It is she who fills wombs, slows the hearts of the dying, and leads her children against the serephim. Her light is like a small sun; she chases away shadows.
Ellai is more subtle. She is a trace, a phantom moon, and there are only a handful of nights she alone takes the sky. There are called Ellai nights, and they are dark and star-scattered and good for furtive things. Ellai is the goddes of assassins and secret lovers. Temples to her are few, and hidden, like the one in the requiem grove in the hills above Loramendi.
”
”
Laini Taylor (Daughter of Smoke & Bone (Daughter of Smoke & Bone, #1))
“
There has always been a sliver of panic in him, deeply buried, when it comes to his daughter: a fear that he is no good as a father, that he is doing everything wrong. That he never quite understood the rules. All those Parisian mothers pushing buggies through the Jardin des Plantes or holding up cardigans in department stores—it seemed to him that those women nodded to each other as they passed, as though each possessed some secret knowledge that he did not. How do you ever know for certain that you are doing the right thing?
”
”
Anthony Doerr (All the Light We Cannot See)
“
Do you not realize that your kids are going to make mistakes, and a lot of them? Do you not realize the damage you do when you push your son’s nose into his mishaps or make your daughter feel worthless because she bumped or spilled something? Do you have any idea how easy it is to make your child feel abject? It’s as simple as letting out the words, “why would you do that!?” or “how many times have I told you…
”
”
Dan Pearce (Single Dad Laughing: The Best of Year One)
“
Books made me believe that smart girls who didn’t necessarily fit in with the popular crowd could be the ones to solve mysteries, rescue people in distress, ferret out international criminals, fly spaceships to distant planets, take up arms and fight battles. Books showed me that not all fathers understand their daughters or even seek to, but that people can turn out okay despite that. Books made me feel beautiful when I wasn’t. Capable when I couldn’t be.
”
”
Lisa Wingate (The Book of Lost Friends)
“
Saying good-bye, perhaps to her father -- her favorite person in this world. this is how she would remember him. Not by the sad unknowing in his eyes, or the grim set of his jaw as he led her to church, but by the things he loved. By the way he showed her how to hold a stick of charcoal, coaxing shapes and shades with the weight of her hand. The songs and stories, the sights from the five summers she went with him to market, when Adeline was old enough to travel, not old enough to cause a stir. By the careful gift of a wooden ring, made for his first and only daughter when she was born -- the one she then offered to the dark.
”
”
Victoria Schwab (The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue)
“
First came bright Spirits, not the Spirits of men, who danced and scattered flowers. Then, on the left and right, at each side of the forest avenue, came youthful shapes, boys upon one hand, and girls upon the other. If I could remember their singing and write down the notes, no man who read that score would ever grow sick or old. Between them went musicians: and after these a lady in whose honour all this was being done.
I cannot now remember whether she was naked or clothed. If she were naked, then it must have been the almost visible penumbra of her courtesy and joy which produces in my memory the illusion of a great and shining train that followed her across the happy grass. If she were clothed, then the illusion of nakedness is doubtless due to the clarity with which her inmost spirit shone through the clothes. For clothes in that country are not a disguise: the spiritual body lives along each thread and turns them into living organs. A robe or a crown is there as much one of the wearer's features as a lip or an eye.
But I have forgotten. And only partly do I remember the unbearable beauty of her face.
“Is it?...is it?” I whispered to my guide.
“Not at all,” said he. “It's someone ye'll never have heard of. Her name on earth was Sarah Smith and she lived at Golders Green.”
“She seems to be...well, a person of particular importance?”
“Aye. She is one of the great ones. Ye have heard that fame in this country and fame on Earth are two quite different things.”
“And who are these gigantic people...look! They're like emeralds...who are dancing and throwing flowers before here?”
“Haven't ye read your Milton? A thousand liveried angels lackey her.”
“And who are all these young men and women on each side?”
“They are her sons and daughters.”
“She must have had a very large family, Sir.”
“Every young man or boy that met her became her son – even if it was only the boy that brought the meat to her back door. Every girl that met her was her daughter.”
“Isn't that a bit hard on their own parents?”
“No. There are those that steal other people's children. But her motherhood was of a different kind. Those on whom it fell went back to their natural parents loving them more. Few men looked on her without becoming, in a certain fashion, her lovers. But it was the kind of love that made them not less true, but truer, to their own wives.”
“And how...but hullo! What are all these animals? A cat-two cats-dozens of cats. And all those dogs...why, I can't count them. And the birds. And the horses.”
“They are her beasts.”
“Did she keep a sort of zoo? I mean, this is a bit too much.”
“Every beast and bird that came near her had its place in her love. In her they became themselves. And now the abundance of life she has in Christ from the Father flows over into them.”
I looked at my Teacher in amazement.
“Yes,” he said. “It is like when you throw a stone into a pool, and the concentric waves spread out further and further. Who knows where it will end? Redeemed humanity is still young, it has hardly come to its full strength. But already there is joy enough int the little finger of a great saint such as yonder lady to waken all the dead things of the universe into life.
”
”
C.S. Lewis (The Great Divorce)
“
Coming back last time to the house she grew up in, Isabel had been reminded of the darkness that had descended with her brothers' deaths, how loss had leaked all over her mother's life like a stain. As a fourteen-year-old, Isabel had searched the dictionary. She knew that if a wife lost a husband, there was a whole new word to describe who she was: she was now a widow. A husband became a widower. But if a parent loss a child, there was no special label for their grief. They were still just a mother or a father, even if they no longer had a son or daughter. That seemed odd. As to her own status, she wondered whether she was still technically a sister, now that her adored brothers had died.
”
”
M.L. Stedman (The Light Between Oceans)
“
There's so much love in him, Dad." The mating bond showed her a depth of feeling, of heart, even greater than she'd imagined. He was someone special, Andrew Liam Kincaid, and he was hers. "I wish you could see him as I do."
"That would be against the laws of nature," Abel said in a somber tone. "I have to be able to kick his ass if necessary-- therefore, I must see him as the filthy bastard who dared hurt my daughter by getting himself shot."
"Are you threatening my mortally wounded mate?"
Her father pressed a kiss to her temple. "I'll hold of until he's healthy.
”
”
Nalini Singh (Play of Passion (Psy-Changeling, #9))
“
Only Yeong-hye, docile and naive, had been unable to deflect their father's temper or put up any form of resistance. Instead, she had merely absorbed all her suffering inside her, deep into the marrow of her bones. Now, with the benefit of hindsight, In-hye could see that the role that she had adopted back then of the hard-working, self-sacrificing eldest daughter had been a sign not of maturity but of cowardice. It had been a survival tactic.
”
”
Han Kang (The Vegetarian)
“
Ordinary father-daughter love had a charge to it that generally was both permitted and indulged. There was just something so beautiful about the big father complementing the tiny girl. Bigness and tininess together at last – yet the bigness would never hurt the tininess! It respected it. In a world in which big always crushes tiny, you wanted to cry at the beauty of big being kind of and worshipful of and being humbled by tiny. You couldn’t help but think of your own father as you saw your little girl with hers.
”
”
Meg Wolitzer (The Interestings)
“
My dad once told me that Winstone Churchill said that Russia was riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma. According to my dad, Churchill had been talking about my mother. This was before the divorce, and he said it half-bitterly, half-respectfully. Because even when he hated her, he admired her.
I think he would have stayed with her forever, trying to figure out the mystery. He was a puzzle solver, the kind of person who likes theorems, theories. X always had to equal something. It couldn't just be X.
To me, my mother wasn't that mysterious. She was my mother. Always reasonable, always sure of herself. To me, she was about as mysterious as a glass fo water. She knew what she wanted; she knew what she didn't want. And that was to be married to my father. I wasn't sure if it was that she fell our of love or if it was that she just never was. in love, I mean.
”
”
Jenny Han (The Summer I Turned Pretty (Summer, #1))
“
It’s a strange thing, being the parent of a teenager. One thing to raise a little boy, another entirely when a person on the brink of adulthood looks to you for wisdom. I feel like I have little to give. I know there are fathers who see the world a certain way, with clarity and confidence, who know just what to say to their sons and daughters. But I’m not one of them. The older I get, the less I understand. I love my son. He means everything to me. And yet, I can’t escape the feeling that I’m failing him. Sending him off to the wolves with nothing but the crumbs of my uncertain perspective.
”
”
Blake Crouch (Dark Matter)
“
Simon had shamelessly tried to curry favor with Isabelle’s father by teaching Robert Lightwood how to use Simon’s digital watch as a timer. Robert was now holding the watch in a death grip and studying it carefully. It would be Robert’s turn with the baby again in sixteen minutes, and he had clasped Simon’s shoulder and said, “Thanks, son,” which Simon took as a blessing to date Robert’s daughter.
”
”
Cassandra Clare (Born to Endless Night (Tales from the Shadowhunter Academy, #9))
“
I'm a good girl. I'm a nice girl. I'm a straight-A, strait-laced, good daughter, good career girl, and I never stole anybody's boyfriend and I never ran out on a girlfriend, and I put up with my parents' shit and brother's shit and I'm not a girl anyhow, I'm over forty fucking years old, and I'm good at my job and I'm great with kids and I held my mother's hand when she died,after four years of holding her hand while she was dying, and I speak to my father ever day on the telephone -- every day, mind you, and what kind of weather do you have on your side of the river, because here it's pretty gray and a big muggy too? It was supposed to say "Great Artist" on my tombstone, but if I died right now it would say "Such a good teacher/daughter/friend" instead; and what I really want to shout, and want in big letters on that grave, too, is FUCK YOU ALL.
”
”
Claire Messud (The Woman Upstairs)
“
You failed me. His brother’s voice, louder than ever in his head. You let him dupe you all over again. Kaz had called Jesper by his brother’s name. A bad slip. But maybe he’d wanted to punish them both. Kaz was older now than Jordie had been when he’d succumbed to the Queen’s Lady Plague. Now he could look back and see his brother’s pride, his hunger for fast success. You failed me, Jordie. You were older. You were supposed to be the smart one.
He thought of Inej asking, Was there no one to protect you? He remembered Jordie seated beside him on a bridge, smiling and alive, the reflection of their feet in the water beneath them, the warmth of a cup of hot chocolate cradled in his mittened hands. We were supposed to look out for each other. They’d been two farm boys, missing their father, lost in this city.
That was how Pekka got them. It wasn’t just the enticement of money. He’d given them a new home. A fake wife who made them hutspot, a fake daughter for Kaz to play with. Pekka Rollins had lured them with a warm fire and the promise of the life they’d lost. And that was what destroyed you in the end: the longing for something you could never have.
”
”
Leigh Bardugo (Crooked Kingdom (Six of Crows, #2))
“
A man worth being with is one…
That never lies to you
Is kind to people that have hurt him
A person that respects another’s life
That has manners and shows people respect
That goes out of his way to help people
That feels every person, no matter how difficult, deserves compassion
Who believes you are the most beautiful person he has ever met
Who brags about your accomplishments with pride
Who talks to you about anything and everything because no bad news will make him love you less
That is a peacemaker
That will see you through illness
Who keeps his promises
Who doesn’t blame others, but finds the good in them
That raises you up and motivates you to reach for the stars
That doesn’t need fame, money or anything materialistic to be happy
That is gentle and patient with children
Who won’t let you lie to yourself; he tells you what you need to hear, in order to help you grow
Who lives what he says he believes in
Who doesn’t hold a grudge or hold onto the past
Who doesn’t ask his family members to deliberately hurt people that have hurt him
Who will run with your dreams
That makes you laugh at the world and yourself
Who forgives and is quick to apologize
Who doesn’t betray you by having inappropriate conversations with other women
Who doesn’t react when he is angry, decides when he is sad or keep promises he doesn’t plan to keep
Who takes his children’s spiritual life very seriously and teaches by example
Who never seeks revenge or would ever put another person down
Who communicates to solve problems
Who doesn’t play games or passive aggressively ignores people to hurt them
Who is real and doesn’t pretend to be something he is not
Who has the power to free you from yourself through his positive outlook
Who has a deep respect for women and treats them like a daughter of God
Who doesn’t have an ego or believes he is better than anyone
Who is labeled constantly by people as the nicest person they have ever met
Who works hard to provide for the family
Who doesn’t feel the need to drink alcohol to have a good time, smoke or do drugs
Who doesn't have to hang out a bar with his friends, but would rather spend his time with his family
Who is morally free from sin
Who sees your potential to be great
Who doesn't think a woman's place has to be in the home; he supports your life mission, where ever that takes you
Who is a gentleman
Who is honest and lives with integrity
Who never discusses your private business with anyone
Who will protect his family
Who forgives, forgets, repairs and restores
When you find a man that possesses these traits then all the little things you don’t have in common don’t matter. This is the type of man worth being grateful for.
”
”
Shannon L. Alder
“
Now. Bram, you are a good friend and an uptanding young man, but I'm afraid that tradition dictates I now attempt to scare you within an inch of your unlife."
"Understood," Bram said, taking his arm back as I got myself under control.
My father is a gentle-looking man. Thus, why I started laughing again as he attempted to look stern. "What are your intentions concerning my daughter?"
Bram cast a look my way, laughing himself, before clearing his throat and doing his best to look scared. "Why, to care for and protect her until I rot away, sir.
”
”
Lia Habel (Dearly, Departed (Gone with the Respiration, #1))
“
She stared up at him, and her eyes were so large they looked like blue mint candies. 'I get to stay?'
'You're damn right you're staying, and I don't want to hear another word of disrespect.' His voice broke. 'I'm your father, and you damn well better love me the same way I love you, or you'll be sorry.'
The next thing he knew, he was grabbing her, and she was grabbing him, and all the bozos coming down the jerway trying to get past them were jabbing them with bags and briefcases, but he didn't care. He was holding tight to this daughter he loved so desperately, and he wasn't ever going to let her go.
”
”
Susan Elizabeth Phillips (Kiss an Angel)
“
We drove on in silence, Dad shaking his head in disgust every few minutes. I stared at him, wondering how it was we got to this place. How the same man who held his infant daughter and kissed her tiny face could one day be so determined to shut her out of his life, out of his heart. How, even when she reached out to him in distress - Please, Dad, come get me, come save me - all he could do was accuse her. How that same daughter could look at him and feel nothing but contempt and blame and resentment, because that's all that radiated off of him for so many years and it had become contagious.
”
”
Jennifer Brown (Hate List)
“
Prime Minister: Whenever I get gloomy with the state of the world, I think about the arrivals gate at Heathrow Airport. General opinion's starting to make out that we live in a world of hatred and greed, but I don't see that. It seems to me that love is everywhere. Often it's not particularly dignified or newsworthy, but it's always there - fathers and sons, mothers and daughters, husbands and wives, boyfriends, girlfriends, old friends. When the planes hit the Twin Towers, as far as I know none of the phone calls from the people on board were messages of hate or revenge - they were all messages of love. If you look for it, I've got a sneaking suspision love actually is all around.
”
”
Richard Curtis
“
Interrupting what promised to be a long spate of fatherly advice, St. Vincent said in a clipped voice, “It’s not a love match. It’s a marriage of convenience, and there’s not enough warmth between us to light a birthday candle. Get on with it, if you please. Neither of us has had a proper sleep in two days.”
Silence fell over the scene, with MacPhee and his two daughters appearing shocked by the brusque remarks. Then the blacksmith’s heavy brows lowered over his eyes in a scowl. “I don’t like ye,” he announced.
St. Vincent regarded him with exasperation. “Neither does my bride-to-be. But since that’s not going to stop her from marrying me, it shouldn’t stop you either. Go on.
”
”
Lisa Kleypas (Devil in Winter (Wallflowers, #3))
“
They were talking more distantly than if they were strangers who had just met, for if they had been he would have been interested in her just because of that, and curious, but their common past was a wall of indifference between them. Kitty knew too well that she had done nothing to beget her father's affection, he had never counted in the house and had been taken for granted, the bread-winner who was a little despised because he could provide no more luxuriously for his family; but she had taken for granted that he loved her just because he was her father, and it was a shock to discover that his heart was empty of feeling for her. She had known that they were all bored by him, but it had never occurred to her that he was equally bored by them. He was as ever kind and subdued, but the sad perspicacity which she had learnt in suffering suggested to her that, though he probably never acknowledged it to himself and never would, in his heart he disliked her.
”
”
W. Somerset Maugham (The Painted Veil)
“
You didn't get it. Sacrifice is a part of life. It's supposed to be. It's not something to regret. It's something to aspire to. Little sacrifices. Big sacrifices. A mother works so her son can go to school. A daughter moves home to take care of her sick father... Rabazzo didn't die for nothing, you know. He sacrificed for his country, and his family knew it, and his kid brother went on to become a good soldier and a great man because he was inspired by it. I didn't die for nothing, either. That night, we might have all driven over that land mine. Then the four of use would have been gone.'
Eddie shook his head. 'But you...' He lowered his voice. 'You lost your life.'
The Captain smacked his tongue on his teeth. 'That's the thing. Sometimes when you sacrifice something precious, you're not really losing it. You're just passing it onto someone else... I shot you, all right... and you lost something, but you gained something as well. You just don't know that yet. I gained something, too... I got to keep my promise. I didn't leave you behind.
”
”
Mitch Albom (The Five People You Meet in Heaven)
“
I wrote a letter to you when I was in the capital. So stupid, to put it all in writing. Every thing I’d done. The information I passed to Tensen. The way I worked against the empire. What I felt. My father read it. He gave it to the emperor.” She was weeping. “And I know, I know that it hurt him, that I broke something, that he felt it break. Maybe I wasn’t me anymore, to him. Do you understand? Not his daughter. Not anyone he knew. Just a lying stranger. But how could he? Why couldn’t he love me most? Or enough. Why couldn’t he love me enough to choose me over his rules?
”
”
Marie Rutkoski (The Winner's Kiss (The Winner's Trilogy, #3))
“
What would they talk about?
Hi, my name's Vane and I howl at the moon late at night in the form of a wolf. I sleep with your daughter and don't think I could live without her. Mind if I have a beer? Oh and while we're at it, let me introduce my brothers. This one here is a deadly wolf known to kill for nothing more than looking at him cross-eyed, and the other one is comatose because some vampires sucked the life out of him after we'd both been sentenced to death by our jealous father.
Yeah, that would go over like a lead balloon.
”
”
Sherrilyn Kenyon (Night Play (Dark-Hunter, #5; Were-Hunter, #1))
“
The truth is, I wanted to watch you for a time before pledging you my sword. To make certain that you were not..."
"...my father's daughter?" If she was not her father's daughter, who was she?
"...mad," he finished. "But I see no taint in you."
"Taint?" Dany bristled.
"I am no maester to quote history at you, Your Grace. Swords have been my life, not books. But every child knows that the Targaryens have always danced too close to madness. Your father was not the first. King Jaehaerys once told me that madness and greatness are two sides of the same coin. Every time a new Targaryen is born, he said, the gods toss a coin in the air and the world holds its to see how it will land.
”
”
George R.R. Martin (A Storm of Swords (A Song of Ice and Fire, #3))
“
We fall into the great continuing circle of dancers. Some leave the floor, tired but giddy; others have only just arrived. They are eager to wear their new status as ladies, to be paraded about and lauded until they see themselves with new eyes. The fathers beam at their daughters, thinking them perfect flowers in need of their protection, while the mothers watch from the margins, certain this moment is their doing. We create illusions we need to go on. And one day, when they no longer dazzle or comfort, we tear them down, brick by glittering brick, until we are left with nothing but the bright light of honesty. The light is liberating. Necessary. Terrifying. We stand naked and emptied before it. Adn when it is too much for our eyes to take, we build a new illusion to shield us from its relentless truth.
But the girls! Their eyes glow with the fever dream of all they might become. They tell themselves this is the beginning of everything. And who am I to say it isn't?
”
”
Libba Bray (The Sweet Far Thing (Gemma Doyle, #3))
“
Sooner or later, you will discover which kind of father you are, and at that moment you will, with perfect horror, recognize the type. You are the kind of father who fakes it, who yells, who measures his children with greatest accuracy only against one another, who evades the uncomfortable and glosses over the painful and pads the historic records of his sorrows and accomplishments alike. You are the kind who teases and deceives and toys with his children and subjects them to displays of rich and manifold sarcasm when--as is always the case--sarcasm is the last thing they need. You are the kind of father who pretends knowledge he doesn't possess, and imposes information with implacable gratuitousness, and teaches lessons at the moment when none can be absorbed, and is right, and has always been right, and always will be right until the end of time, and never more than immediately after he has been wrong. And when your daughter's body begins to betray her, and her sky flickers in the distance with the heat lightning of sex, you clear your throat and stroke your chin whiskers and tell her to go ask her mother. You can't help it--you're a walking cliché.
”
”
Michael Chabon (Manhood for Amateurs)
“
In the time you will live, there will be heroes around. Simple men, honest men who work two jobs, go to school, raise a family, and serve our God. An older couple who have the courage to seek out the truth while enduring the scorn and ridicule of their children and friends. A young man, a special spirit, who will take on a body that is deformed- and yet you will never see hime unhappy or without a smile on his face. A young mother who will care for a daughter while she suffers a painful death, and yet never doubt or loose faith that her Father loves them both.
In your worl famous people will be hard to find. But you will be surrounded by heroes, you will meet them everyday. They will be the simple people who struggle but never give up, those who strive to be happy despite the cares of the physical world, those who dream of the day when they will find the truth, those who search for understanding as to why they were born, why there is pain, or what it all means, and yet continure to endure, knowing in their soul, somewhere deep inside, that there has to be an answer.
These are the heroes that our Father needs down on earth. And you will be a hero. We already know that.
”
”
Chris Stewart
“
When I was a child, an angel came to say,
A true friend is coming my warrior to sweep you away,
It won’t be easy the path because it leads through hell,
But if you’re faithful, it will be the greatest story to tell,
You will move God’s daughters to a place of hope,
Your story will teach everyone there is nothing they can’t cope,
You will suffer a lot, but not one tear will you waste,
Because for all that you do for me, you will be graced,
For I am bringing you someone that wants to travel your trail,
Someone you already met when you passed through heaven’s veil,
A warrior, a friend that whispers your heart’s song,
Someone that will run with you and pull your spirit along,
Don’t you see the timing was love's fated throw,
Because I put you both there to help one another grow,
I am the writer of all great stories your chapters were written by me,
You suffered, you cried because I needed you to see,
That your faith in my ending goes far beyond two,
It was going to change more hearts than both of you knew,
So hush my child and wait for my loving hand,
The last chapter is not written and still in the sand,
It is up to you to finish, before the tide washes it away,
All that is in your heart, I’ve put there for you to say,
This is not about winning, loss or pain,
I made you the way you are because true love stories are insane,
I wrote you in heaven as I sat on its sandy shore,
You know with all of my heart I loved you both more,
There is no better ending two people seeing each other's heart,
Together your spirits will never drift apart,
Because two kindred spirits is what I made you to be,
The waves and beach crashing together because of-- ME.
”
”
Shannon L. Alder
“
It was just regular growing up, of course, the kind everyone does - but it still hurt him, I know, like the memory I have of the time he dropped me off at the train station when I was going back to Chicago. I could see him through the window of the train, but he couldn't see me through the tinted glass.
I waved, trying to get his attention as he walked up and down the platform trying to figure out where I was sitting. From up in the train, he looked so small. If he'd seen me, he would have smiled and waved, but he didn't know I could see him, and the sadness on his face was exposed to me then. He looked lost. He stood there on the platform a long time, even after my train started pulling away, still trying to catch a glimpse of me waving back.
”
”
Catherine Chung (Forgotten Country)
“
is a broken man an outlaw?"
"More or less." Brienne answered.
Septon Meribald disagreed. "More less than more. There are many sorts of outlaws, just as there are many sorts of birds. A sandpiper and a sea eagle both have wings, but they are not the same. The singers love to sing of good men forced to go outside the law to fight some wicked lord, but most outlaws are more like this ravening Hound than they are the lightning lord. They are evil men, driven by greed, soured by malice, despising the gods and caring only for themselves. Broken men are more deserving of our pity, though they may be just as dangerous. Almost all are common-born, simple folk who had never been more than a mile from the house where they were born until the day some lord came round to take them off to war. Poorly shod and poorly clad, they march away beneath his banners, ofttimes with no better arms than a sickle or a sharpened hoe, or a maul they made themselves by lashing a stone to a stick with strips of hide. Brothers march with brothers, sons with fathers, friends with friends. They've heard the songs and stories, so they go off with eager hearts, dreaming of the wonders they will see, of the wealth and glory they will win. War seems a fine adventure, the greatest most of them will ever know.
"Then they get a taste of battle.
"For some, that one taste is enough to break them. Others go on for years, until they lose count of all the battles they have fought in, but even a man who has survived a hundred fights can break in his hundred-and-first. Brothers watch their brothers die, fathers lose their sons, friends see their friends trying to hold their entrails in after they've been gutted by an axe.
"They see the lord who led them there cut down, and some other lord shouts that they are his now. They take a wound, and when that's still half-healed they take another. There is never enough to eat, their shoes fall to pieces from the marching, their clothes are torn and rotting, and half of them are shitting in their breeches from drinking bad water.
"If they want new boots or a warmer cloak or maybe a rusted iron halfhelm, they need to take them from a corpse, and before long they are stealing from the living too, from the smallfolk whose lands they're fighting in, men very like the men they used to be. They slaughter their sheep and steal their chicken's, and from there it's just a short step to carrying off their daughters too. And one day they look around and realize all their friends and kin are gone, that they are fighting beside strangers beneath a banner that they hardly recognize. They don't know where they are or how to get back home and the lord they're fighting for does not know their names, yet here he comes, shouting for them to form up, to make a line with their spears and scythes and sharpened hoes, to stand their ground. And the knights come down on them, faceless men clad all in steel, and the iron thunder of their charge seems to fill the world...
"And the man breaks.
"He turns and runs, or crawls off afterward over the corpses of the slain, or steals away in the black of night, and he finds someplace to hide. All thought of home is gone by then, and kings and lords and gods mean less to him than a haunch of spoiled meat that will let him live another day, or a skin of bad wine that might drown his fear for a few hours. The broken man lives from day to day, from meal to meal, more beast than man. Lady Brienne is not wrong. In times like these, the traveler must beware of broken men, and fear them...but he should pity them as well
”
”
George R.R. Martin
“
Whenever I get gloomy with the state of the world, I think about the arrivals gate at Heathrow Airport. General opinion's starting to make out that we live in a world of hatred and greed, but I don't see that. It seems to me that love is everywhere. Often it's not particularly dignified or newsworthy, but it's always there - fathers and sons, mothers and daughters, husbands and wives, boyfriends, girlfriends, old friends. When the planes hit the Twin Towers, as far as I know none of the phone calls from the people on board were messages of hate or revenge - they were all messages of love. If you look for it, I've got a sneaky feeling you'll find that love actually is all around.
”
”
Richard Curtis
“
So often, we're told that women's stories are unimportant. After all, what does it matter what happens in the main room, in the kitchen, or in the bedroom? Who cares about the relationships between mother, daughter, and sister? A baby's illness, the sorrows and pains of childbirth, keeping the family together during war, poverty, or even in the best of days are considered small and insignificant compared with the stories of men, who fight against nature to grow their crops, who wage battles to secure their homelands, who struggle to look inward in search of the perfect man. We're told that men are strong and brave, but I think women know how to endure, accept defeat, and bear physical and mental agony much better than men. The men in my life—my father, Z.G., my husband, my father-in-law, my brother-in-law, and my son—faced, to one degree or another, those great male battles, but their hearts—so fragile—wilted, buckled, crippled, corrupted, broke, or shattered when confronted with the losses women face every day...Our men try to act strong, but it is May, Yen-yen, Joy, and I who must steady them and help them bear their pain, anguish, and shame.
”
”
Lisa See (Shanghai Girls (Shanghai Girls, #1))
“
No, dear, but speaking of Father reminded me how much I miss him, how much I owe him, and how faithfully I should watch and work to keep his little daughters safe and good for him.
Yet you told him to go, Mother, and didn’t cry when he went, and never complain now, or seem as if you needed any help, said Jo, wondering.
I gave my best to the country I love, and kept my tears till he was gone. Why should I complain, when we both have merely done our duty and will surely be the happier for it in the end? If I don’t seem to need help, it is because I have a better friend, even than Father, to comfort and sustain me. My child, the troubles and temptations of your life are beginning and may be many, but you can overcome and outlive them all if you learn to feel the strength and tenderness of your Heavenly Father as you do that of your earthly one. The more you love and trust Him, and the less you will depend on human power and wisdom. His love and care never tire or change, can never be taken from you, but my become the source of lifelong peace, happiness, and strength. Believe this heartily, and go to God with all your little cares, and hopes, and sins, and sorrows, as freely and confidingly as you come to your mother.
”
”
Louisa May Alcott (Little Women (Little Women, #1))
“
We are the girls with anxiety disorders, filled appointment books, five-year plans. We take ourselves very, very seriously. We are the peacemakers, the do-gooders, the givers, the savers. We are on time, overly prepared, well read, and witty, intellectually curious, always moving … We pride ourselves on getting as little sleep as possible and thrive on self-deprivation. We drink coffee, a lot of it. We are on birth control, Prozac, and multivitamins … We are relentless, judgmental with ourselves, and forgiving to others. We never want to be as passive-aggressive are our mothers, never want to marry men as uninspired as our fathers … We are the daughters of the feminists who said, “You can be anything,” and we heard, “You have to be everything.
”
”
Courtney Martin
“
The King and Queen did the best they could. They hired the most superior tutors and governesses to teach Cimorene all the things a princess ought to know— dancing, embroidery, drawing, and etiquette. There was a great deal of etiquette, from the proper way to curtsy before a visiting prince to how loudly it was permissible to scream when being carried off by a giant. (...)
Cimorene found it all very dull, but she pressed her lips together and learned it anyway. When she couldn’t stand it any longer, she would go down to the castle armory and bully the armsmaster into giving her a fencing lesson. As she got older, she found her regular lessons more and more boring. Consequently, the fencing lessons became more and more frequent.
When she was twelve, her father found out.
“Fencing is not proper behavior for a princess,” he told her in the gentle-but-firm tone recommended by the court philosopher.
Cimorene tilted her head to one side. “Why not?”
“It’s ... well, it’s simply not done.”
Cimorene considered. “Aren’t I a princess?”
“Yes, of course you are, my dear,” said her father with relief. He had been bracing himself for a storm of tears, which was the way his other daughters reacted to reprimands.
“Well, I fence,” Cimorene said with the air of one delivering an unshakable argument. “So it is too done by a princess.
”
”
Patricia C. Wrede (Dealing with Dragons (Enchanted Forest Chronicles, #1))
“
I do know now I was never forgotten. And I know something else and as an apostle of our master Jesus Christ, I proclaim with all the certainty and conviction of my heart and soul, neither are you. You are not forgotten! Sisters, wherever you are, whatever the circumstances may be, you are not forgotten. No matter how dark your days may seem, no matter how insignificant you may feel, no matter how overshadowed you think you may be, your Heavenly Father has not forgotten you. In fact, He loves you with an infinite love. Just think of it! You are known and remembered by the most majestic, powerful and glorious Being in the universe. You are loved by the King of infinite space and everlasting time. He who created and knows the stars knows you and your name. You are the daughters of His kingdom!
”
”
Dieter F. Uchtdorf
“
CONSORTING WITH ANGELS
I was tired of being a woman,
tired of the spoons and the pots,
tired of my mouth and my breasts,
tired of the cosmetics and the silks.
There were still men who sat at my table,
circled around the bowl I offered up.
The bowl was filled with purple grapes
and the flies hovered in for the scent
and even my father came with his white bone.
But I was tired of the gender of things.
Last night I had a dream
and I said to it . . .
"You are the answer.
You will outlive my husband and my father."
In that dream there was a city made of chains
where Joan was put to death in man's clothes
and the nature of the angels went unexplained,
no two made in the same species,
one with a nose, one with an ear in its hand,
one chewing a star and recording its orbit,
each one like a poem obeying itself,
performing God's functions,
a people apart.
"You are the answer,"
I said, and entered,
lying down on the gates of the city.
Then the chains were fastened around me
and I lost my common gender and my final aspect.
Adam was on the left of me
and Eve was on the right of me,
both thoroughly inconsistent with the world of reason.
We wove our arms together
and rode under the sun.
I was not a woman anymore,
not one thing or the other.
0 daughters of Jerusalem,
the king has brought me into his chamber.
I am black and I am beautiful.
I've been opened and undressed.
I have no arms or legs.
I'm all one skin like a fish.
I'm no more a woman
than Christ was a man.
”
”
Anne Sexton (The Complete Poems)
“
I returned from the village. The house seemed unbearably dull. But I bore it. "There is no escape from loneliness and separation...." I told myself often. "Wife, child, brothers, parents, friends.... We come together only to go apart again. It is one continuous movement. They move away from us as we move away from them. The law of life can't be avoided. The law comes into operation the moment we detach ourselves from our mother's womb. All struggle and misery in life is due to our attempt to arrest this law or get away from it or in allowing ourselves to be hurt by it. The fact must be recognized. A profound unmitigated loneliness is the only truth of life. All else is false. My mother got away from her parents, my sisters from our house, I and my brother away from each other, my wife was torn away from me, my daughter is going away with my mother, my father has gone away from his father, my earliest friends - where are they? They scatter apart like the droplets of a waterspray. The law of life. No sense in battling against it...." Thus I reconciled myself to this separation with less struggle than before.
”
”
R.K. Narayan (The English Teacher)
“
Can I tell my daughter that I loved her father? This was the man who rubbed my feet at night. He praised the food that I cooked. He cried honestly when I brought out trinkets I had saved for the right day, the day he gave me my daughter, a tiger girl.
How could I not love this man? But it was a love of a ghost. Arms that encircled but did not touch. A bowl full of rice but without my appetite to eat it. No hunger. No fullness.
Now Saint is a ghost. He and I can now love equally. He knows the things I have been hiding all these years. Now I must tell my daughter everything. That she is a daughter of a ghost. She has no chi . This is my greatest shame. How can I leave this world without leaving her my spirit?
So this is what I will do. I will gather together my past and look. I will see a thing that has already happened. The pain that cut my spirit loose. I will hold that pain in my hand until it becomes hard and shiny, more clear. And then my fierceness can come back, my golden side, my black side. I will use this sharp pain to penetrate my daughter's tough skin and cut her tiger spirit loose. She will fight me, because this is the nature of two tigers. But I will win and give her my spirit, because this is a way a mother loves her daughter.
I hear my daughter speaking to her husband downstairs. They say words that mean nothing. They sit in a room with no life in it.
I know a thing before it happens. She will hear the table and vase crashing on the floor. She will come upstairs and into my room. Her eyes will see nothing in the darkness, where I am waiting between the trees.
”
”
Amy Tan (The Joy Luck Club)
“
There are parts of a woman’s heart that are reserved for certain types of love. Experiencing the love of a father figure in an appropriate way is essential in paving the way for the love of a man to be experienced in the right way.
The love of a father is vital in ensuring that a woman’s heart is kept open in this area. If this area is not kept open, it produces problems later on in a woman’s life, for that area is also reserved for the romantic love that comes in the form of a marriage relationship.
This is an extremely sensitive area of the heart for a woman, and has plenty of opportunity to be easily bruised. When that does occur, she will put up a protective barrier to try and avoid any such pain occurring again. If this barrier isn’t dismantled fairly soon, a woman’s heart becomes accustomed to its protective barrier, and the heart shielded inside gradually becomes hardened. As women, we may be able to function like this for awhile. But there will come a time in your life where God will begin to peel away those hard layers surrounding your heart, and you probably won’t like that sensation. But you have to fight your natural instinct to run away.
This is where many Christian women may get stuck. They view every man through the lens of what their father was to them, or what he was not. Their perception of men is shaded, and often damaged, by the very people who should have been modeling the world of adult relationships to their daughters. As a result, their judgement is often clouded, and women find themselves settling for less than what they truly deserve. Many marriages, even Christian marriages, have been damaged and even terminated because one or both partners refused to sit down and deal with their past issues.
”
”
Corallie Buchanan (Watch Out! Godly Women on the Loose)
“
And yet, they hesitated. The knowledge that they might never see each other again, that some of them—maybe all of them—might not survive this night hung heavy in the air. A gambler, a convict, a wayward son, a lost Grisha, a Suli girl who had become a killer, a boy from the Barrel who had become something worse.
Inej looked at her strange crew, barefoot and shivering in their soot-stained prison uniforms, their features limned by the golden light of the dome, softened by the mist that hung in the air.
What bound them together? Greed? Desperation? Was it just the knowledge that if one or all of them disappeared tonight, no one would come looking? Inej’s mother and father might still shed tears for the daughter they’d lost, but if Inej died tonight, there would be no one to grieve for the girl she was now. She had no family, no parents or siblings, only people to fight beside. Maybe that was something to be grateful for, too.
It was Jesper who spoke first. “No mourners,” he said with a grin. “No funerals,” they replied in unison. Even Matthias muttered the words softly.
”
”
Leigh Bardugo (Six of Crows (Six of Crows, #1))
“
Woman's fear of the female Self, of the experience of the numinous archetypal Feminine, becomes comprehensible when we get a glimpse - or even only a hint – of the profound otherness of female selfhood as contrasted to male selfhood. Precisely that element which, in his fear of the Feminine, the male experiences as the hole, abyss, void, and nothingness turns into something positive for the woman without, however, losing these same characteristics. Here the archetypal Feminine is experienced not as illusion and as maya but rather as unfathomable reality and as life in which above and below, spiritual and physical, are not pitted against each other; reality as eternity is creative and, at the same time, is grounded in primeval nothingness. Hence as daughter the woman experiences herself as belonging to the female spiritual figure Sophia, the highest wisdom, while at the same time she is actualizing her connection with the musty, sultry, bloody depths of swamp-mother Earth. However, in this sort of Self-discovery woman necessarily comes to see herself as different from what presents itself to men -as, for example, spirit and father, but often also as the patriarchal godhead and his ethics. The basic phenomenon - that the human being is born of woman and reared by her during the crucial developmental phases - is expressed in woman as a sense of connectedness with all living things, a sense not yet sufficiently realized, and one that men, and especially the patriarchal male, absolutely lack to the extent women have it.
To experience herself as so fundamentally different from the dominant patriarchal values understandably fills the woman with fear until she arrives at that point in her own development where, through experience and love that binds the opposites, she can clearly see the totality of humanity as a unity of masculine and feminine aspects of the Self.
”
”
Erich Neumann (The Fear of the Feminine and Other Essays on Feminine Psychology)
“
Life up here may be simple but it’s not easy, and it’s not for everyone. Water runs out; pipes freeze; engines won’t start; it’s dark for eighteen, nineteen hours a day, for months. Even longer in the far north. Up here it’s about having enough food to eat, and enough heat to stay alive through the winter. It’s about survival, and enjoying the company of the people that surround us. It’s not about whose house is the biggest, or who has the nicest clothes, or the most money. We support each other because we’re all in this together.
“And people either like that way of life or they don’t; there’s no real in-between. People like Wren and Jonah, they find they can’t stay away from it for too long. And people like Susan, well . . . they never warm up to it. They fight the challenges instead of embracing them, or at least learning to adapt to them.” Agnes pauses, her mouth open as if weighing whether she should continue. “I don’t agree with the choices Wren made where you’re concerned, but I know it was never a matter of him not caring about you. And if you want to blame people for not trying, there’s plenty of it to go around.” Agnes turns to smile at me then. “Or you could focus on the here-and-now, and not on what you can’t change.
”
”
K.A. Tucker (The Simple Wild (Wild, #1))
“
Yet there is one experience which most sincere ex-Communists share, whether or not they go only part way to the end of the question it poses. The daughter of a former German diplomat in Moscow was trying to explain to me why her father, who, as an enlightened modern man, had been extremely pro-Communist, had become an implacable anti-Communist. It was hard for her because, as an enlightened modern girl, she shared the Communist vision without being a Communist. But she loved her father and the irrationality of his defection embarrassed her. 'He was immensely pro-Soviet,' she said,' and then -- you will laugh at me -- but you must not laugh at my father -- and then -- one night -- in Moscow -- he heard screams. That's all. Simply one night he heard screams.'
A child of Reason and the 20th century, she knew that there is a logic of the mind. She did not know that the soul has a logic that may be more compelling than the mind's. She did not know at all that she had swept away the logic of the mind, the logic of history, the logic of politics, the myth of the 20th century, with five annihilating words: one night he heard screams.
”
”
Whittaker Chambers (Witness)
“
Brambleclaw's tail filicked angrily. "Did there have to be so many lies?" He was staring at Squirrelflight. "Couldn't you have told me the truth?"
Squirrelflight dipped her head. "It was never my secret to tell. Leafpool had so much to lose".
"She lost everything anyway", Brambleclaw snarled.
"No, I didn't". Leafpool lifted her muzzle. "I watched my kits grow into fine warrior, and I still serve my Clan with all my heart".
Lionblaze felt his heart prick. Perhaps this was the truth that was most important. Leafpool had sacrificed so much and, even though her kits rejected her time and again, she'd never stopped loving them. In his darkest moments, he couldn't deny that.
"Brambleclaw, I'm sorry". Squirrelflight moved closer to the ThunderClan deputy. Her voice was stronger now, as if she was tired of being punished for something she had believed to be right. "You have to understand that I never intended to hurt you. I loved you, and was proud to raise these kits with you. You were a wonderful father".
"But I wasn't their father!" Brambleclaw hissed.
"Yes, you were!" Squirrelflight thrust her muzzle close to Brambleclaw's. Her eyes blazed. "Don't throw away everything just because you are angry with me!"
Lionblaze swallowed. "I was so proud to be your son".
Brambleclaw looked at him in surprise, as if he'd forgotton Lionblaze was there. Something in the deputy's expression changed. "And I couldn't have asked for a better son. And you Jayfeather. Or a better daughter, Hollyleaf." Hollyleaf opened her mouth as if to protest, but Brambleclaw spoke first. "You played no part in this deception, I know that. Whatever you did, it was because of the lies taht had been told when you were born."
"It was my fault alone," Leafpool meowed quietly. "You are wrong to blame Squirrelflight. She was just being loyal to me. And now that we know about the prophecy, surely the only thing that matters is that these kits were accepted by their Clan? It's not about us, after all. It's about them. Their destinies shaped ours, right from the moment they were born."
Squirrelflight nodded. "Everything was meant to be".
Lionblaze looked down at his paws. If these cats could accept their destinies, then he had enough courage to accept his. I am one of the Four.
”
”
Erin Hunter (The Last Hope (Warriors: Omen of the Stars, #6))
“
Pick,” Emma tells her.
Tira’s lip trembles. She tries to back out of sight, but someone pushes her forward. “Pick…Pick what?”
Emma motions to the halo of predators above them, around them, everywhere. “Pick two. Any two you want, and I will have them divide Jagen’s body evenly.”
“No!” Jagen screams, his face contorted in terror.
Emma cocks her head at him. “Jagen, make up your mind. Didn’t you just say you don’t believe I have the Gift? So then why should you care if she points to some harmless sharks?”
He clamps his mouth shut, but the look of panic stays.
Tira says, “I couldn’t do that, Highness.”
Highness! Someone called Emma “Highness!” It’s one of the many names she calls Galen when she’s mad at him. The irony is not lost on Emma. Her death glare cuts off his snickers.
She turns back to Tira. “Of course you can. There’s nothing to worry about because Paca has the Gift, remember? Isn’t that what you all believe? She would never let any harm come to her own father, would she? I know I wouldn’t. So go ahead and pick. Paca will save Jagen.”
Clever little angelfish. Galen smirks at Jagen, who won’t meet his eyes. Nalia and Grom make their way to the edge of the center. Grom grins at Emma like she’s his own daughter. Which is very weird for Galen.
”
”
Anna Banks (Of Triton (The Syrena Legacy, #2))
“
Once to swim I sought the sea-side,
There to sport among the billows;
With the stone of many colors
Sank poor Aino to the bottom
Of the deep and boundless blue-sea,
Like a pretty son-bird, perished.
Never come a-fishing, father,
To the borders of these waters,
Never during all thy life-time,
As thou lovest daughter Aino.
Mother dear, I sought the sea-side,
There to sport among the billows;
With the stone of many colors,
Sank poor Aino to the bottom
Of the deep and boundless blue-sea,
Like a pretty song-bird perished.
Never mix thy bread, dear mother,
With the blue-sea's foam and waters,
Never during all thy life-time,
As thou lovest daughter Aino.
Brother dear, I sought the sea-side,
There to sport among the billows;
With the stone of many colors
Sank poor Aino to the bottom
Of the deep and boundless blue-sea,
Like a pretty song-bird perished.
Never bring thy prancing war-horse,
Never bring thy royal racer,
Never bring thy steeds to water,
To the borders of the blue-sea,
Never during all thy life-time,
As thou lovest sister Aino.
Sister dear, I sought the sea-side,
There to sport among the billows;
With the stone of many colors
Sank poor Aino to the bottom
Of the deep and boundless blue-sea,
Like a pretty song-bird perished.
Never come to lave thine eyelids
In this rolling wave and sea-foam,
Never during all thy life-time,
As thou lovest sister Aino.
All the waters in the blue-sea
Shall be blood of Aino's body;
All the fish that swim these waters
Shall be Aino's flesh forever;
All the willows on the sea-side
Shall be Aino's ribs hereafter;
All the sea-grass on the margin
Will have grown from Aino's tresses.
”
”
Elias Lönnrot (The Kalevala)
“
Dear Deborah,
Words do not come easily for so many men. We are taught to be strong, to provide, to put away our emotions. A father can work his way through his days and never see that his years are going by. If I could go back in time, I would say some things to that young father as he holds, somewhat uncertainly, his daughter for the very first time. These are the things I would say:
When you hear the first whimper in the night, go to the nursery leaving your wife sleeping. Rock in a chair, walk the floor, sing a lullaby so that she will know a man can be gentle.
When Mother is away for the evening, come home from work, do the babysitting. Learn to cook a hotdog or a pot of spaghetti, so that your daughter will know a man can serve another's needs.
When she performs in school plays or dances in recitals, arrive early, sit in the front seat, devote your full attention. Clap the loudest, so that she will know a man can have eyes only for her.
When she asks for a tree house, don't just build it, but build it with her. Sit high among the branches and talk about clouds, and caterpillars, and leaves. Ask her about her dreams and wait for her answers, so that she will know a man can listen.
When you pass by her door as she dresses for a date, tell her she is beautiful. Take her on a date yourself. Open doors, buy flowers, look her in the eye, so that she will know a man can respect her.
When she moves away from home, send a card, write a note, call on the phone. If something reminds you of her, take a minute to tell her, so that she will know a man can think of her even when she is away.
Tell her you love her, so that she will know a man can say the words.
If you hurt her, apologize, so that she will know a man can admit that he's wrong.
These seem like such small things, such a fraction of time in the course of two lives. But a thread does not require much space. It can be too fine for the eye to see, yet, it is the very thing that binds, that takes pieces and laces them into a whole.
Without it, there are tatters.
It is never too late for a man to learn to stitch, to begin mending.
These are the things I would tell that young father, if I could.
A daughter grown up quickly. There isn't time to waste.
I love you,
Dad
”
”
Lisa Wingate (Dandelion Summer (Blue Sky Hill #4))
“
It was as easy as breathing to go and have tea near the place where Jane Austen had so wittily scribbled and so painfully died. One of the things that causes some critics to marvel at Miss Austen is the laconic way in which, as a daughter of the epoch that saw the Napoleonic Wars, she contrives like a Greek dramatist to keep it off the stage while she concentrates on the human factor. I think this comes close to affectation on the part of some of her admirers. Captain Frederick Wentworth in Persuasion, for example, is partly of interest to the female sex because of the 'prize' loot he has extracted from his encounters with Bonaparte's navy. Still, as one born after Hiroshima I can testify that a small Hampshire township, however large the number of names of the fallen on its village-green war memorial, is more than a world away from any unpleasantness on the European mainland or the high or narrow seas that lie between. (I used to love the detail that Hampshire's 'New Forest' is so called because it was only planted for the hunt in the late eleventh century.) I remember watching with my father and brother through the fence of Stanstead House, the Sussex mansion of the Earl of Bessborough, one evening in the early 1960s, and seeing an immense golden meadow carpeted entirely by grazing rabbits. I'll never keep that quiet, or be that still, again.
This was around the time of countrywide protest against the introduction of a horrible laboratory-confected disease, named 'myxomatosis,' into the warrens of old England to keep down the number of nibbling rodents. Richard Adams's lapine masterpiece Watership Down is the remarkable work that it is, not merely because it evokes the world of hedgerows and chalk-downs and streams and spinneys better than anything since The Wind in the Willows, but because it is only really possible to imagine gassing and massacre and organized cruelty on this ancient and green and gently rounded landscape if it is organized and carried out against herbivores.
”
”
Christopher Hitchens (Hitch 22: A Memoir)
“
It was Freud's ambition to discover the cause of hysteria, the archetypal female neurosis of his time. In his early investigations, he gained the trust and confidence of many women, who revealed their troubles to him.Time after time, Freud's patients, women from prosperous, conventional families, unburdened painful memories of childhood sexual encounters with men they had trusted: family friends, relatives, and fathers. Freud initially believed his patients and recognized the significance of their confessions. In 1896, with the publication of two works, The Aetiology of Hysteria and Studies on Hysteria, he announced that he had solved the mystery of the female neurosis. At the origin of every case of hysteria, Freud asserted, was a childhood sexual trauma.
But Freud was never comfortable with this discovery, because of what it implied about the behavior of respectable family men. If his patients' reports were true, incest was not a rare abuse, confined to the poor and the mentally defective, but was endemic to the patriarchal family. Recognizing the implicit challenge to patriarchal values, Freud refused to identify fathers publicly as sexual aggressors. Though in his private correspondence he cited "seduction by the father" as the "essential point" in hysteria, he was never able to bring himself to make this statement in public. Scrupulously honest and courageous in other respects, Freud falsified his incest cases. In The Aetiology of Hysteria, Freud implausibly identified governessss, nurses, maids, and children of both sexes as the offenders. In Studies in Hysteria, he managed to name an uncle as the seducer in two cases. Many years later, Freud acknowledged that the "uncles" who had molested Rosaslia and Katharina were in fact their fathers. Though he had shown little reluctance to shock prudish sensibilities in other matters, Freud claimed that "discretion" had led him to suppress this essential information.
Even though Freud had gone to such lengths to avoid publicly inculpating fathers, he remained so distressed by his seduction theory that within a year he repudiated it entirely. He concluded that his patients' numerous reports of sexual abuse were untrue. This conclusion was based not on any new evidence from patients, but rather on Freud's own growing unwillingness to believe that licentious behavior on the part of fathers could be so widespread. His correspondence of the period revealed that he was particularly troubled by awareness of his own incestuous wishes toward his daughter, and by suspicions of his father, who had died recently.
p9-10
”
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Judith Lewis Herman (Father-Daughter Incest (with a new Afterword))
“
You were in business making meth? Do you have any idea what that drug does to people?"
We weren't givin' it away," Concise snaps. "If someone was fool enough to mess himself up, that was his problem."
I shake my head, disgusted. "If you build it, they will come."
If you build it," Concise says, "you cover your rent. If you build it, you pay off the loan sharks. If you build it, you put shoes on your kid's feet and food in his belly and maybe even show up every now and then with a toy that every other goddamn kid in the school already has." He looks up at me. "If you build it, maybe your son don't have to, when he grow up."
It is amazing -- the secrets you can keep, even when you are living in close quarters. "You didn't tell me."
Concise gets up and braces his hands against the upper bunk. "His mama OD'd. He lives with her sister, who can't always be bothered to take care of him. I try to send money so that I know he's eatin' breakfast and gettin' school lunch tickets. I got a little bank account for him, too. Jus' in case he don't want to be part of a street gang, you know? Jus' in case he want to be an astronaut or a football player or somethin'." He digs out a small notebook from his bunk. "I'm writin' him. A diary, like. So he know who his daddy is, by the time he learn to read."
It is always easier to judge someone than to figure out what might have pushed him to the point where he might do something illegal or morally reprehensible, because he honestly believes he'll be better off. The police will dismiss Wilton Reynolds as a drug dealer and celebrate one more criminal permanently removed from society. A middle-class father who meets Concise on the street, with his tough talk and his shaved head, will steer clear of him, never guessing that he, to, has a little boy waiting for him at home. The people who read about me in the paper, stealing my daughter during a custody visit, will assume I am the worst sort of nightmare.
”
”
Jodi Picoult (Vanishing Acts)
“
Who is Aslan?” asked Susan.
“Aslan?” said Mr. Beaver, “Why, don’t you know? He’s the King. He’s the Lord of the whole wood, but not often here, you understand. Never in my time or my father’s time. But the word has reached us that he has come back. He is in Narnia at this moment. He’ll settle the White Queen all right. It is he, not you, that will save Mr. Tumnus.”
“She won’t turn him into stone too?” said Edmund.
“Lord love you, Son of Adam, what a simple thing to say!” answered Mr. Beaver with a great laugh. “Turn him into stone? If she can stand on her two feet and look him in the face it’ll be the most she can do and more than I expect of her. No, no. He’ll put all to rights, as it says in an old rhyme in these parts:
Wrong will be right, when Aslan comes in sight,
At the sound of his roar, sorrows will be no more,
When he bares his teeth, winter meets its death
And when he shakes his mane, we shall have spring again.
You’ll understand when you see him.”
“But shall we see him?” asked Susan.
“Why, Daughter of Eve, that’s what I brought you here for. I’m to lead you where you shall meet him,” said Mr. Beaver.
“Is--is he a man?” asked Lucy.
“Aslan a man!” said Mr. Beaver sternly. “Certainly not. I tell you he is the King of the wood and the son of the great Emperor-Beyond-the-Sea. Don’t you know who is the King of Beasts? Aslan is a lion--the Lion, the great Lion.”
“Ooh!” said Susan, “I’d thought he was a man. Is he--quite safe? I shall feel rather nervous about meeting a lion.”
“That you will, dearie, and no mistake,” said Mrs. Beaver. “If there’s anyone who can appear before Aslan without their knees knocking, they’re either braver than most or else just silly.”
“Then he isn’t safe?” said Lucy.
“Safe?” said Mr. Beaver. “Don’t you hear what Mrs. Beaver tells you? Who said anything about safe? ’Course he isn’t safe. But he’s good. He’s the King, I tell you.
”
”
C.S. Lewis (The Chronicles of Narnia The Lion, the Witch & the Wardrobe)
“
Poor old Jean Valjean, of course, loved Cosette only as a father; but, as we noted earlier, into this fatherly love his lonely single status in life had introduced every other kind of love; he loved Cosette as his daughter, and he loved her as his mother, and he loved her as his sister; and, as he had never had either a lover or a wife, as nature is a creditor that does not accept nonpayment, that particular feeling, too, the most indestructible of all, had thrown itself in with the rest, vague, ignorant, heavenly, angelic, divine; less a feeling than an instinct, less an instinct than an attraction, imperceptible and invisible but real; and love, truly called, lay in his enormous tenderness for Cosette the way a vein of gold lies in the mountain, dark and virginal.
We should bear in mind that state of the heart that we have already mentioned. Marriage between them was out of the question, even that of souls; and yet it is certain that their destinies had joined together as one. Except for Cosette, that is, except for a child, Jean Valjean had never, in all his long life, known anything about love. Serial passions and love affairs had not laid those successive shades of green over him, fresh green on top of dark green, that you notice on foliage that has come through winter and on men that have passed their fifties. In short, and we have insisted on this more than once, this whole inner fusion, this whole set, the result of which was lofty virtue, had wound up making Jean Valjean a father for Cosette. A strange father, forged out of the grandfather, son, brother, and husband that were all in Jean Valjean; a father in whom there was even a mother; a father who loved Cosette and worshipped her, and for whom that child was light, was home, was his homeland, was paradise.
”
”
Victor Hugo (Les Misérables)
“
These are lines from my asteroid-impact novel, Regolith:
Just because there are no laws against stupidity doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be punished.
I haven’t faced rejection this brutal since I was single.
He smelled trouble like a fart in the shower.
If this was a kiss of gratitude, then she must have been very grateful.
Not since Bush and Cheney have so few spent so much so fast for so long for so little.
As a nympho for mind-fucks, Lisa took to politics like a pig to mud.
She began paying men compliments as if she expected a receipt.
Like the Aerosmith song, his get-up-and-go just got-up-and-went.
“You couldn’t beat the crap out of a dirty diaper!”
He embraced his only daughter as if she was deploying to Iraq.
She was hotter than a Class 4 solar flare!
If sex was a weapon, then Monique possessed WMD
I haven’t felt this alive since I lost my virginity.
He once read that 95% of women fake organism, and the rest are gay.
Beauty may be in the eyes of the beholder, but ugly is universal.
Why do wives fart, but not girlfriends?
Adultery is sex that is wrong, but not necessarily bad.
The dinosaurs stayed drugged out, drooling like Jonas Brothers fans.
Silence filled the room like tear gas.
The told him a fraction of the truth and hoped it would take just a fraction of the time.
Happiness is the best cosmetic,
He was a whale of a catch, and there were a lot of fish in the sea eager to nibble on his bait.
Cheap hookers are less buck for the bang,
Men cannot fall in love with women they don’t find attractive, and women cannot fall in love with men they do not respect.
During sex, men want feedback while women expect mind-reading.
Cooper looked like a cow about to be tipped over.
His father warned him to never do anything he couldn’t justify on Oprah.
The poor are not free -- they’re just not enslaved. Only those with money are free.
Sperm wasn’t something he would choose on a menu, but it still tasted better than asparagus.
The crater looked alive, like Godzilla was about to leap out and mess up Tokyo.
Bush follows the Bible until it gets to Jesus.
When Bush talks to God, it’s prayer; when God talks to Bush, it’s policy.
Cheney called the new Miss America a traitor – apparently she wished for world peace.
Cheney was so unpopular that Bush almost replaced him when running for re-election, changing his campaign slogan to, ‘Ain’t Got Dick.’
Bush fought a war on poverty – and the poor lost.
Bush thinks we should strengthen the dollar by making it two-ply.
Hurricane Katrina got rid of so many Democratic voters that Republicans have started calling her Kathleen Harris.
America and Iraq fought a war and Iran won.
Bush hasn’t choked this much since his last pretzel.
Some wars are unpopular; the rest are victorious.
So many conservatives hate the GOP that they are thinking of changing their name to the Dixie Chicks.
If Saddam had any WMD, he would have used them when we invaded. If Bush had any brains, he would have used them when we invaded.
It’s hard for Bush to win hearts and minds since he has neither.
In Iraq, you are a coward if you leave and a fool if you stay.
Bush believes it’s not a sin to kill Muslims since they are going to Hell anyway. And, with Bush’s help, soon.
In Iraq, those who make their constitution subservient to their religion are called Muslims. In America they’re called Republicans.
With great power comes great responsibility – unless you’re Republican.
”
”
Brent Reilly
“
I used to read in books how our fathers persecuted mankind. But I never appreciated it. I did not really appreciate the infamies that have been committed in the name of religion, until I saw the iron arguments that Christians used. I saw the Thumbscrew—two little pieces of iron, armed on the inner surfaces with protuberances, to prevent their slipping; through each end a screw uniting the two pieces. And when some man denied the efficacy of baptism, or may be said, 'I do not believe that a fish ever swallowed a man to keep him from drowning,' then they put his thumb between these pieces of iron and in the name of love and universal forgiveness, began to screw these pieces together. When this was done most men said, 'I will recant.' Probably I should have done the same. Probably I would have said: 'Stop; I will admit anything that you wish; I will admit that there is one god or a million, one hell or a billion; suit yourselves; but stop.'
But there was now and then a man who would not swerve the breadth of a hair. There was now and then some sublime heart, willing to die for an intellectual conviction. Had it not been for such men, we would be savages to-night. Had it not been for a few brave, heroic souls in every age, we would have been cannibals, with pictures of wild beasts tattooed upon our flesh, dancing around some dried snake fetich.
Let us thank every good and noble man who stood so grandly, so proudly, in spite of opposition, of hatred and death, for what he believed to be the truth.
Heroism did not excite the respect of our fathers. The man who would not recant was not forgiven. They screwed the thumbscrews down to the last pang, and then threw their victim into some dungeon, where, in the throbbing silence and darkness, he might suffer the agonies of the fabled damned. This was done in the name of love—in the name of mercy, in the name of Christ.
I saw, too, what they called the Collar of Torture. Imagine a circle of iron, and on the inside a hundred points almost as sharp as needles. This argument was fastened about the throat of the sufferer. Then he could not walk, nor sit down, nor stir without the neck being punctured, by these points. In a little while the throat would begin to swell, and suffocation would end the agonies of that man. This man, it may be, had committed the crime of saying, with tears upon his cheeks, 'I do not believe that God, the father of us all, will damn to eternal perdition any of the children of men.'
I saw another instrument, called the Scavenger's Daughter. Think of a pair of shears with handles, not only where they now are, but at the points as well, and just above the pivot that unites the blades, a circle of iron. In the upper handles the hands would be placed; in the lower, the feet; and through the iron ring, at the centre, the head of the victim would be forced. In this condition, he would be thrown prone upon the earth, and the strain upon the muscles produced such agony that insanity would in pity end his pain.
I saw the Rack. This was a box like the bed of a wagon, with a windlass at each end, with levers, and ratchets to prevent slipping; over each windlass went chains; some were fastened to the ankles of the sufferer; others to his wrists. And then priests, clergymen, divines, saints, began turning these windlasses, and kept turning, until the ankles, the knees, the hips, the shoulders, the elbows, the wrists of the victim were all dislocated, and the sufferer was wet with the sweat of agony. And they had standing by a physician to feel his pulse. What for? To save his life? Yes. In mercy? No; simply that they might rack him once again.
This was done, remember, in the name of civilization; in the name of law and order; in the name of mercy; in the name of religion; in the name of Christ.
”
”
Robert G. Ingersoll (The Liberty of Man, Woman and Child)