Imaginary Daughters Quotes

He was scowling. "What the hell? If I had a daughter and she was dating a guy like me, I'd take him out back and threaten him with a shotgun to make sure he treated her right."

Kit's mouth fell open. "You?"

"Yeah." He folded his arms, his scowl growing heavier. "Jeez, Kit, he didn't even tell me to be good to you. That's bullshit."

Realizing he was dead serious, she bit the inside of her cheek to keep from smiling. "Where did you pick up this chivalrous instinct?"

"My father," he said, the sneer that usually accompanied any mention of Robert St. John missing from his voice. "He's a son of a bitch, but he brought me up to look after any women under my care."

"Under your care?" Kit raised an eyebrow. "Chauvinistic much?"

He shrugged. "Yeah, well, maybe it is, but I'm not changing. My imaginary daughters are never dating musicians. Ever."

Stomach somersaulting at the idea of little girls with Noah's features and talent, she shook her head. "Noah St. John, bad boy of rock and concerned father of imaginary daughters. Hell hath frozen over and become an ice rink. ~ Nalini Singh

Raising children I've decided is a lot sadder than I expecte4d. Seeing them grow up brightly and vividly is tempered by the knowledge that each year brings another share of lasts. The last time I push my daughter on a swing. The last time I play Tooth Fairy or Santa Claus. The last time I read a bedtime story. If I could give my daughters one piece of advice I would tell them to make the most of the first times -their first kiss, their first date, their first love, the first smile of their first child…There can only be one. ~ Michael Robotham

To me, I have my friends who I've known my whole life, and I can count them on one hand. They're people I went to school with, my mum's friends' daughters. You know? ~ Rita Ora

Such a shame, all the gorgeous ones are either mental or totally imaginary.... ~ Gladys Quintal

Make peace with your fears; after all, they are only imaginary friends. ~ Samer Chidiac

It is the fate of most men who mingle with the world, and attain even the prime of life, to make many real friends, and lose them in the course of nature. It is the fate of all authors or chroniclers to create imaginary friends, and lose them in the course of art. Nor is this the full extent of their misfortunes; for they are required to furnish an account of them besides. ~ Charles Dickens

One of my daughters was a bit flat-chested, so she had implants and she's got a lovely pair now. I see nothing wrong with it. ~ Rod Stewart

I urge pupils when studying a work and in order to master its most important aspic, the rhythmic structure, or the ordering of the time process, to do just what a conductor does with the score: to place music on the desk and to conduct the work from beginning to end as if it were played by someone else, an imaginary pianist with the conductor trying to impress him with his will, his tempo first of all, plus all the details of his performance. ~ Heinrich Neuhaus

Virtue is the strength and power of the daughters of God. ~ Elaine S. Dalton

Only children are weird. The only children I know, including myself, are either superweird or very talented and special or a mix of the two. I think there was always a certain independence and loneliness - I had a lot of imaginary friends as a kid. ~ Rachel Bloom

I kissed his cheek. "My King." I swooped into the courtly curtsy he'd taught me as a girl, regally kicking an imaginary train aside as I turned to go. He was laughing silently as I left. For a moment I saw that spark again. I did not say goodbye. ~ Sandra Gulland

I have two daughters, and we live here in Manhattan, and having gone through the Manhattan kindergarten application process, nothing will ever rival the stress of that. ~ Tina Fey

Among some tossed-out books of my daughter's which I rescued ... was one too awful to live. I returned it to the trash, resisting the urge to say a few parting words. All day long the thought of its mingling with chicken bones and olive pits nagged at me. Half a dozen times I removed it and replaced it, like an executioner with scruples about capital punishment. Finally I put it on a high shelf where I wouldn't have to see it. Life imprisonment. ~ Lynne Sharon Schwartz

Black Lesbians are not a threat to the Black family. Many of us have families of our own. We are not white, and we are not a disease. We are women who love women. This does not mean we are going to assault your daughters in an alley on Nostrand Avenue. It does not mean we only think about sex, any more than you only think about sex. Even if you do believe any of these stereotypes about Black Lesbians, begin to practice acting like you don't believe them. ~ Audre Lorde

The entire affective world, constructed over the years with utmost difficulty, collapses with a kick in the father's genitals, a smack on the mother's face, an obscene insult to the sister, or the sexual violation of a daughter. Suddenly an entire culture based on familial love, devotion, the capacity for mutual sacrifice collapses. Nothing is possible in such a universe, and that is precisely what the torturers know ... From my cell, I'd hear the whispered voices of children trying to learn what was happening to their parents, and I'd witness the efforts of daughters to win over a guard, to arouse a feeling of tenderness in him, to incite the hope of some lovely future relationship between them in order to learn what was happening to her mother, to get an orange sent to her, to get permission for her to go to the bathroom. ~ Jacobo Timerman

Fiction is not an escape from the world either. Imaginary experience is also experience. O ~ Siri Hustvedt

This 'flying saucer' situation is not at all imaginary or seeing too much in some natural phenomena. Something is really flying around. The phenomenon is something real and not visionary or fictitious. ~ Nathan Farragut Twining

I'd rather entrust my daughters to Casanova than my secrets to a novelist. Literary fires are hotter even than sexual ones. ~ Aldous Huxley

A merchant, who had three daughters, was once setting out upon a journey; but before he went he asked each daughter what gift he should bring back for her. The eldest wished for pearls; the second for jewels; but the third, who was called Lily, said, 'Dear father, bring me a rose.' Now it was no easy task to find a rose, for it was the middle of winter; yet as she was his prettiest daughter, and was very fond of flowers, her father said he would try what he could do. So he kissed all three, and bid them goodbye. ~ Jacob Grimm

I am told that César Aira writes two books a year, at least, some of which are published by a little Argentinean company named Beatriz Viterbo, after the character in Borges's story "The Aleph." The books of his that I have been able to find were published by Mondadori and and Tusquets Argentina. It's frustrating, because once you've started reading Aira, you don't want to stop. His novels seem to put the theories of Gombrowicz into practice, except, and the difference is fundamental, that Gombrowicz was the abbot of a luxurious imaginary monastery, while Aira is a nun or novice among the Discalced Carmelites of the Word. Sometimes he is reminiscent of Roussel (Roussel on his knees in a bath red with blood), but the only living writer to whom he can be compared is Barcelona's Enrique Vila-Matas.

Aira is an eccentric, but he is also one of the three or four best writers working in Spanish today. ~ Roberto Bolano

To Israel's faithful hosts in the past, as to its loyal sons and daughters of the present, the Siddur has been the gate to communion with their Father in Heaven; and, at the same time, it has been a mighty spiritual bond that unites them to their scattered brethren the world over. ~ Joseph Hertz

Mediocrity is 'purpose' left to rot in minds ensnared in the deluded rationalization that vision is nothing more than a collection of fanciful dreams constructed by an imaginary God. ~ Craig D. Lounsbrough

[ ... ] Wondering why white people named girl babies things like Hope and Faith and Patience - names they could never live up to - and black mothers called their daughters Mercy, Deliverance, Salvation - crosses they'd always have to bear. ~ Jodi Picoult

You stay home and raise daughters, who grow up and get jobs and then feel pity for you, their stay-at-home mothers. ~ Noah Hawley

I do have an important question, but I can ask it from out here. Are you dry?
Of course I'm dry. Why do you ask that?
So many daughters have come home wet lately. ~ Jeanne Birdsall

When I was five and Sarah seven, my mother went on a trip. She was gone from our home in Rochester, New York, for several days. But she was often gone - not always from the house but missing from our lives nonetheless. Then one day Sarah and I returned from school to find her standing at the door, a piñata in her hand, smiling her spellbinding, I-am-overjoyed-at-the-sight-of-you smile. Now when I imagine that scene, my mind's eye puts a sombrero on her head, but I doubt she was wearing one. She had just come home from a trip to Juarez, Mexico, where she had obtained a quickie divorce. She told us she was taking us to live in Florida. We had no idea where – or what – Florida was. "There will be oranges there," she said. "They're everywhere. You can reach up and pull them off the trees. ~ Katie Hafner

When our mind appears, the world appears along with it. The appearance
of the world depends upon the appearance of our mind. But our mind cannot
stand alone without a world. Whenever our mind appears, it does so by
attaching itself to a physical body, which it mistakes to be itself. The body
which we mistake to be ourself is a part of the world, but due to our
identification of that one particular body as 'I', we create an artificial
distinction between what we imagine to be ourself and what we imagine to
be other than ourself.
This false distinction is created by our mind, but without it our mind
cannot stand. Though the world is its own imaginary creation, our mind
cannot imagine a world without simultaneously imagining itself to be a
particular body in that world. ~ Bhagavan Sri Ramana

Your Eve was wise, John. She knew that Paradise would make her mad, if she were to live forever with Adam and know no other thing but strawberries and tigers and rivers of milk. She knew they would tire of these things, and each other. They would grow to hate every fruit, every stone, every creature they touched. Yet where could they go to find any new thing? It takes strength to live in Paradise and not collapse under the weight of it. It is every day a trial. And so Eve gave her lover the gift of time, time to the timeless, so that they could grasp at happiness.
...
And this is what Queen Abir gave to us, her apple in the garden, her wisdom--without which we might all have leapt into the Rimal in a century. The rite bears her name still. For she knew the alchemy of demarcation far better than any clock, and decreed that every third century husbands and wives should separate, customs should shift and parchmenters become architects, architects farmers of geese and monkeys, Kings should become fishermen, and fishermen become players of scenes. Mothers and fathers should leave their children and go forth to get other sons and daughters, or to get none if that was their wish. On the roads of Pentexore folk might meet who were once famous lovers, or a mother and child of uncommon devotion--and they would laugh, and remember, but call each other by new names, and begin again as friends, or sisters, or lovers, or enemies. And some time hence all things would be tossed up ~ Catherynne M. Valente

That's lovely singing, Saraid," Eile said. "Is Sorry asleep now?"
Saraid shook her head solemnly. "Sorry's sad. Crying." She held the doll against her shoulder, patting its back.
"Oh. Why is she sad?"
"Sorry wants Feeler come back." It was like a punch in the gut. She had thought Saraid had forgotten him; she had assumed new friends and a safe haven would drive the memories of that long journey across country, just the three of them, from her daughter's mind. Foolish. The images of that time were still bright and fresh in her own head; she dreamed of them every night. Why should Saraid be any different just because she was small? ~ Juliet Marillier

I realized at that moment - observing his form move further away without once turning back - that I'd already begun to rebuild the imaginary wall between us. I was shielding my heart with stone cold feelings again, the only way I knew to protect it. I still planned to try my hand at prayer. If God would grant me this one request, if I could keep my only friend, I would give anything in return, even the treasured books trapped beneath my arm. I'd tasted enough of a dismal life to know that a real, true friend was of greater worth than the collection of every imagined fairytale in the world. ~ Richelle E. Goodrich

Writer's block is when your imaginary friends won't talk to you. ~ Mary Papas

I have said to people I have six children, one son, four daughters, and a church. ~ Robert H. Schuller

Only when you drink from the river of silence, shall you indeed sing. And, when you have reached the mountain top, then you shall begin to climb. And, when the earth shall claim your limbs, then shall you truly dance.
-Khalid Gibran ~ Jean Sasson

Bethany." His quiet voice intruded.
Her heart turned over heavily. "This is real right?"
His face contorted as if he were in pain. "Yes, it's real."
Crazy people probably did things like this all the time. Asked their imaginary alien friends if they were real, and of course, they'd say yes. ~ Jennifer L. Armentrout

Batman can create as many crappy trophies as he wants. They don't change a thing. They're built on lies and sand. And they will fall. Like his whole damn world. It's important for me to stay on mission. No distractions. I'm here to make sure I can follow his moves throughout the city. Not get caught up in his imaginary nostalgia. There's nothing to be gained getting caught up in his gravity. Nothing. ~ Peter J. Tomasi

It is certain that success naturally confirms in us a favourable opinion of our own abilities. Scarce any man is willing to allot to accident, friendship, and a thousand causes, which concur in every event without human contrivance or interposition, the part which they may justly claim in his advancement. We rate ourselves by our fortune rather than our virtues, and exorbitant claims are quickly produced by imaginary merit. ~ Samuel Johnson

Maybe that's all that family really is, a group of people who all miss the same imaginary place. ~ Zach Braff

She has several imaginary conversations with him and two imaginary arguments. ~ Jojo Moyes

WAR CHILD is the true story of Magdalena (Leni) Janic whose name appears on The Welcome Wall at Sydney's Darling Harbour. The story spans 100 years starting in pre WWII Nazi Germany and ends in the suburbs of Adelaide. It's a window into what life was like for a young illegitimate German girl growing up in poverty, coping with ostracism, bullying, abuse and dispossession as society was falling down around her and she becomes a refugee. But it's also a story of a woman's unconditional love for her family, the sacrifices she made and secrets she kept to protect them. Her ultimate secret was only revealed in a bizarre twist after her death and much to her daughter's (and author) surprise involved her. A memorable tear-jerker! A sad cruel story told with so much love. ~ Annette Janic

It isn't just the physical presence of the father that matters- it's his engagement and involvement. An emotionally remote or rejecting or actively punitive father leads to girls' feeling pretty apprehensive around men. ~ Victoria Secunda

Sometimes I muse about how wonderful it would be if I could string all my dreams together into one continuous life, a life consisting of entire days full of imaginary companions and created people. ~ Fernando Pessoa

We are our mothers' daughters, are we not? ~ Corey Ann Haydu

Past, n. That part of Eternity with some small fraction of which we have a slight and regrettable acquaintance. A moving line called the Present parts it from an imaginary period known as the Future. These two grand divisions of Eternity, of which the one is continually effacing the other, are entirely unlike. The one is dark with sorrow and disappointment, the other bright with prosperity and joy ... Yet the Past is the Future of yesterday, the Future is the Past of to-morrow. They are one-the knowledge and the dream. ~ Ambrose Bierce

This so-called animisn that not so much the Fan Nannies but everybody else around here subscribes to. can we really just write it off as primitive superstition run amok? Do only human beings have souls, or is that a narcissistic, chauvinistic piece of self-flattery? I mean, can't we look at that great old teak tree over there or at this gulch, and see as much of the divine in them as in some ol' anthropomorphic Sunday school Boom Daddy with imaginary long gray whiskers and a platinum bathrobe? Are we capable of entertaining the possibility that there may have been a holy entity in the cross as well as on it? ~ Tom Robbins

A reader can never tell if it's a real thimble or an imaginary thimble, because by the time you're reading it, they're the same. It's a thimble. It's in the book. ~ Margaret Atwood

Things have changed, of course. There are counsellors at the ready. Kindness and understanding. Life is harder for some, we're told. Not their fault, even if the blows are purely imaginary. Felt just as keenly by the recipient, or the non recipient, as the case may be.
But good use can be made of everything, if you are willing. ~ Alice Munro

James's expedition to Scotland is wholly imaginary, though there appears to have been space for it during Henry's progress to the North to pay his devotions at Beverley Minster. ~ Charlotte Mary Yonge

Why does a dad matter so much to a daughter, in particular? A dad is the one who teaches a daughter what a male is all about. It's the first man in her life
the first man she loves, the first male she tries to please, the first man who says no to her, the first man to discipline her. In effect, he sets her up for success or failure with the opposite sex. Not only that, but she takes cues from how Dad treats Mom as she grows up about what to expect as a woman who is in a relationship with a man. So Dad sets up his daughter's marriage relationship too. ~ Kevin Leman

What's really fun is seeing mothers bringing their daughters to the shows. And the best part is the mothers know they don't have to worry about sexual innuendo in the songs. The shows are family shows. ~ Peter Noone

Even before the letter he'd been divided: one part of him swanning with Jay Gatsby around an imaginary Gotham; the other part stolid and earthbound, nose to the deep fryer, in the stifling, sizzling South. ~ Garth Risk Hallberg