My Young Daughter Quotes

The biggest untapped source of energy today is our youth. I am from an age of consumerism, but my two daughters are young enough to change the way their generation thinks. ~ Mike Horn

Nearby sat a veteran in a wheelchair. He was young, handsome, and athletic, through missing a leg.

My daughter went to him and asked, "You're army - right?"

He said, "Yes, I am."

My daughter hugged him. "Thank you," she said. Tears welled in the man's eyes.

"Did you get my card?" she asked. "My school sent you a card. It said, 'Thank you for saving our Earth.'"

The guy just about lost it. He said, "You're welcome. Yes, we did get your card. Thank you for doing that."

- Michael Sobel, son of Herbert Sobel. Michael talking about his 6 year old daughter meeting veterans. ~ Marcus Brotherton

I was lonely, deadly lonely. And I was to find out then, as I found out so many times, over and over again, that women especially are social beings, who are not content with just husband and family, but must have a community, a group, an exchange with others. Young and old, even in the busiest years of our lives, we women especially are victims of the long loneliness.
It was years before I woke up without that longing for a face pressed against my breast, an arm about my shoulder. The sense of loss was there.
I never was so unhappy, never felt so great the sense of loneliness. No matter how many times I gave up mother, father, husband, brother, daughter, for His sake, I had to do it over again.
Tamar is partly responsible for the title of this book in that when I was beginning it she was writing me about how alone a mother of young children always is. I had also just heard from an old woman who lived a long and full life, and she too spoke of her loneliness ~ Dorothy Day

What happens when insatiability dominates a person's emotional functioning? The process of maturation is preempted by an obsession or an addiction, in this case for peer connection. Peer contact whets the appetite without nourishing. It titillates without satisfying. The end result of peer contact is usually an urgent desire for more. The more the child gets, the more he craves.

The mother of an eight-year-old girl mused, "I don't get it - the more time my daughter spends with her friends, the more demanding she becomes to get together with them. How much time does she really need for social interaction, anyway?" Likewise, the parents of a young adolescent complained that "as soon as our son comes home from camp, he gets on the phone right away to call the kids he's just been with. Yet it's the family he hasn't seen for two weeks."

The obsession with peer contact is always worse after exposure to peers, whether it is at school or in playtimes, sleepovers, class retreats, outings, or camps. If peer contact satiated, times of peer interaction would lead automatically to increased self-generated play, creative solitude, or individual reflection. Many parents confuse this insatiable behavior with a valid need for peer interaction.

Over and over I hear some variation of "but my child is absolutely obsessed with getting together with friends. It would be cruel to deprive him." Actually, it would be more cruel and irresponsible to indulge what s ~ Gabor Mate

She became a very famous, very popular young girl. Before that, she was my daughter, but now I'm her father. ~ Ziauddin Yousafzai

When she was too young to resist, or even to understand, I turned my daughter into a lifelong, rabid Yankees fan. ~ Gene Weingarten

It was my very good fortune to find a mentor, Clay Felker, who started my career at the 'New York Magazine' as a freelance writer when I had to quit my job at the 'Herald Tribune' to stay home with my young daughter. ~ Gail Sheehy

The Suburbs

In the suburbs I
I learned to drive
And you told me we'd never survive
Grab your mother's keys we're leavin'

You always seemed so sure
That one day we'd fight in
In a suburban world
your part of town gets minor
So you're standin' on the opposite shore
But by the time the first bombs fell
We were already bored
We were already, already bored

Sometimes I can't believe it
I'm movin' past the feeling
Sometimes I can't believe it
I'm movin' past the feeling again

Kids wanna be so hard
But in my dreams we're still screamin' and runnin' through the yard
And all of the walls that they built in the seventies finally fall
And all of the houses they build in the seventies finally fall
Meant nothin' at all
Meant nothin' at all
It meant nothin

Sometimes I can't believe it
I'm movin' past the feeling
Sometimes I can't believe it
I'm movin' past the feeling and into the night

So can you understand?
Why I want a daughter while I'm still young
I wanna hold her hand
And show her some beauty
Before this damage is done

But if it's too much to ask, it's too much to ask
Then send me a son

Under the overpass
In the parking lot we're still waiting
It's already passed
So move your feet from hot pavement and into the grass
Cause it's already passed
Arcade Fire

And then there was the sad sign that a young woman working at a Tim Hortons in Lethbridge, Alberta, taped to the drive-through window in 2007. It read, "No Drunk Natives."

Accusations of racism erupted, Tim Hortons assured everyone that their coffee shops were not centres for bigotry, but what was most interesting was the public response. For as many people who called in to radio shows or wrote letters to the Lethbridge Herald to voice their outrage over the sign, there were almost as many who expressed their support for the sentiment. The young woman who posted the sign said it had just been a joke.

Now, I'll be the first to say that drunks are a problem. But I lived in Lethbridge for ten years, and I can tell you with as much neutrality as I can muster that there were many more White drunks stumbling out of the bars on Friday and Saturday nights than there were Native drunks. It's just that in North America, White drunks tend to be invisible, whereas people of colour who drink to excess are not.

Actually, White drunks are not just invisible, they can also be amusing. Remember how much fun it was to watch Dean Martin, Red Skelton, W. C. Fields, John Wayne, John Barrymore, Ernie Kovacs, James Stewart, and Marilyn Monroe play drunks on the screen and sometimes in real life? Or Jodie Marsh, Paris Hilton, Cheryl Tweedy, Britney Spears, and the late Anna Nicole Smith, just to mention a few from my daughter's generation. And let's not forget some ~ Thomas King

This story was written many moons ago under an apple tree in an orchard in Kent, which is one of England's prettiest counties . . . I had read at least twenty of the [fairy tales] when I noticed something that had never struck me before--I suppose because I had always taken it for granted. All the princesses, apart from such rare exceptions as Snow White, were blond, blue-eyed, and beautiful, with lovely figures and complexions and extravagantly long hair. This struck me as most unfair, and suddenly I began to wonder just how many handsome young princes would have asked a king for the hand of his daughter if that daughter had happened to be gawky, snub-nosed, and freckled, with shortish mouse-colored hair? None, I suspected. They would all have been of chasing after some lissome Royal Highness with large blue eyes and yards of golden hair and probably nothing whatever between her ears! It was in that moment that a story about a princess who turned out to be ordinary jumped into my mind, and the very next morning I took my pencil box and a large rough-notebook down to the orchard and, having settled myself under an apple tree in full bloom, began to write . . . the day was warm and windless and without a cloud in the sky. A perfect day and a perfect place to write a fairy story. ~ M.M. Kaye

My daughter's death will not be in vain! The young people of this country will not allow that to happen! ~ Darrell Scott

How even I, "a dutiful daughter," as Simone de Beauvoir once described her young self, was living a life so different from my mother's; when she was my age she was married, about to become pregnant with me. I was beginning to think that this habit of mind - constantly tracing myself back to my mother, to where she'd begun and left off - wasn't idiosyncratic, but something that many if not most women did, a feature of the female experience. ~ Kate Bolick

TIA OR TARA has stopped applying makeup to my wife's face and is looking at Scottie with disapproval. The light is hitting this woman's face, giving me an opportunity to see that she should perhaps be working on her own makeup. Her coloring is similar to a manila envelope. There are specks of white in her eyebrows, and her concealer is not concealing. I can tell my daughter doesn't know what to do with this woman's critical look.

"What?" Scottie asks. "I don't want any makeup." She looks at me for protection, and it's heartbreaking. All the women who model with Joanie have this inane urge to make over my daughter with the notion that they're helping her somehow. She's not as pretty as her older sister or her mother, and these other models think that slapping on some rouge will somehow make her feel better about her facial fate. They're like missionaries. Mascara thumpers.

"I was just going to say that I think your mother was enjoying the view," Tia or Tara says. "It's so pretty outside. You should let the light in."

My daughter looks at the curtain. Her little mouth is open. Her hand reaches for a tumbleweed of hair.

"Listen here, T. Her mother was not enjoying the view. Her mother is in a coma. And she's not supposed to be in bright light."

"My name is not T," she says. "My name is Allison."

"Okay, then, Ali. Don't confuse my daughter, please."

"I'm turning into a remarkable young lady," Scottie say ~ Kaui Hart Hemmings

I was living as a young single mom. I was 19 when I was divorced, and my daughter was a year old, and I waited tables here three to four nights a week for several years while I was trying to support myself and my daughter and the day I got that acceptance at Harvard Law School was an unforgettable day. ~ Wendy Davis

There are so many things to grieve ... All the dogs & cats & birds & snakes we have loved & lost, & old lovers, but what else? ... it took me forever to see that one of them was my own daughter, my baby, a young woman I thought of only as a girl, a child, & there she was, suddenly a woman, & I felt this ache gnaw at me as if I hadn't eaten in a year ... I stood there watching my daughter gesture & move & laugh with the grace of a grown-up, & I just started crying like a baby. It wasn't unlike the same type of sorrow we all feel when we realize something we once had that was very precious is not longer there. That it is forever lost, changed, deceased. Like a baby, gone, except in your memory ... My own daughter is now a woman. I get it. Another passage, another form of loss, another reason to grieve, another part of this life process. ~ Kris Radish

This world has emptied me of all but the oldest purpose: tomorrow's life. I live now for my young Duke and the daughter yet to be. She ~ Frank Herbert

All of my kids are into music. My older daughter plays guitar, piano, sings. My young son, he sings. ~ Martin Gore

I will tell you what Jews are like. Once, in the early months of the war, we were on the march, and we had halted at a village for the night. A horrible old Jew, with a red beard like Judas Iscariot, came sneaking up to my billet. I asked him what he wanted. 'Your honour,' he said, 'I have brought a girl for you, a beautiful young girl only seventeen. It will only be fifty francs.' 'Thank you,' I said, 'you can take her away again. I don't want to catch any diseases.' 'Diseases!' cried the Jew, 'mais, monsieur le capitaine, there's no fear of that. It's my own daughter!' That is the Jewish national character for you. ~ George Orwell

I think it's important for kids to express themselves with bad fashion. I struggle a little bit now because I have a daughter and I feel with fashion, like they're sexualizing the kids so young. Little kids in high heels and that kind of thing is really difficult for me to wrap my head around. ~ Busy Philipps

My body is like a single nerve ending from head to toe. Everything feels alive and more. My heart is opening, like the heart of Rappaccini's daughter, Beatrice, when she meets young Giovanni after he wanders into her garden. As I stand there, I can almost feel it unfold, petal by petal, beat by beat. ~ Jennifer Niven

Here was what I wanted to happen when I walked through the door after my first real date and my first ever kiss. I wanted my mom to say, "Dear God, Meg, you're glowing. Sit and tell me about this boy. He let you borrow his jacket? That's so adorable." Instead, I came off the high of that day by writing a letter to my dead brother and doing yoga between my twin beds, trying to forget my absent mother. ~ Laura Anderson Kurk

I was a meek child who bloomed into something untamed and out of place. Just as I never mastered the skill of walking on my own two feet, I never acquired southern social etiquette. Whenever I was at a family gathering, tension surrounded me. Everyone always wondered, "What the hell is Maggie going to say next?" My mother cleverly masked her true feelings with her pretty, young face and consistent, bright smile. I, as her daughter, was a representation of her. And she was carrying a time bomb in a nursery. In a world where it was impolite to air one's dirty laundry, I wore my most ragged, period-stained panties as a trendy accessory. ~ Maggie Young

I have loved your daughter from the first time I saw her. We were young. I had no clue what love was, but over the years she has never left my heart. I know with all that I am, I can make her happy."
The lord chuckled, "I believe so too, son. Now all you have to do is convince my daughter. ~ Julia Mills

My young friends, ... not all the whirlwinds in life are of your own making. Some come because of the wrong choices of others, and some come just because this is mortality. You are His son or His daughter. He made your spirit strong and capable of being resilient to the whirlwinds of life. The whirlwinds in your youth, like the wind against a young tree, can increase your spiritual strength, preparing you for the years ahead. ~ Neil L. Andersen

I will describe the choices I made, continue to take responsibility for my decisions, and express my remorse to Judge Salas and the public. I am heartbroken that this is affecting my family - especially my four young daughters, who mean more to me than anything in the world. ~ Teresa Giudice

The older I get, the more I see the power of that young woman, my mother. ~ Sharon Olds

I wish I could just go tell all the young women I work with, all these fabulous women, 'Believe in yourself and negotiate for yourself. Own your own success.' I wish I could tell that to my daughter. But it's not that simple. ~ Sheryl Sandberg

We need to get home and put some ointments and ice on the stings. Vinegar will make it worse, so if you thought Giraffe Boy could pee on you, you're shit out of luck."
She agrees as if prepared for this - the punishment, the medication, the swelling, the pain that hurts her now and the pain that will hurt her later. She seems okay with my disapproval. She's gotten her story, after all, and she's beginning to see how much easier physical pain is to tolerate than emotional pain. I'm unhappy that she's learning this at such a young age.
"The hospital will have ointments and ice," she says. ~ Kaui Hart Hemmings

Why were you named Garrett?" she heard him ask.
"My mother was convinced that I was going to be a boy. She wanted to name me after one of her brothers, who died while he was still young. But she didn't survive my birth. Above the objections of friends and relations, my father insisted on calling me Garrett anyway."
"I like it," Ransom murmured.
"It suits me," Garrett said, "although I'm not certain my mother would have approved of giving a masculine name to a daughter." After a reflective pause, she surprised herself by saying impulsively, "Sometimes I imagine going back in time, to stop the hemorrhage that killed her."
"Is that why you became a doctor?"
Garrett pondered the question with a slight frown. "I've never thought about it that way before. I suppose helping people could be my way of saving her, over and over. But I would have found the study of medicine fascinating regardless. The human body is a remarkable machine. ~ Lisa Kleypas

I'm really worried about what the world is going to be like when my daughters are young women, [when] they are young leaders or mothers or businesspeople - whatever they're going to be. I'm afraid they're going to have a less healthy and less biologically rich planet. ~ Jeff Corwin

For most of my life, I would have automatically said that I would opt for conscientious objector status, and in general, I still would. But the spirit of the question is would I ever, and there are instances where I might. If immediate intervention would have circumvented the genocide in Rwanda or stopped the Janjaweed in Darfur, would I choose pacifism? Of course not. Scott Simon, the reporter for National Public Radio and a committed lifelong Quaker, has written that it took looking into mass graves in former Yugoslavia to convince him that force is sometimes the only option to deter our species' murderous impulses.

While we're on the subject of the horrors of war, and humanity's most poisonous and least charitable attributes, let me not forget to mention Barbara Bush (that would be former First Lady and presidential mother as opposed to W's liquor-swilling, Girl Gone Wild, human ashtray of a daughter. I'm sorry, that's not fair. I've no idea if she smokes.) When the administration censored images of the flag-draped coffins of the young men and women being killed in Iraq - purportedly to respect "the privacy of the families" and not to minimize and cover up the true nature and consequences of the war - the family matriarch expressed her support for what was ultimately her son's decision by saying on Good Morning America on March 18, 2003, "Why should we hear about body bags and deaths? I mean it's not relevant. So why should I waste my beautiful mind on something ~ David Rakoff

Sometimes, in the stillness of my room, my mom's voice came to me, repeating things she'd said for months. Like, "My skin is melting off my face, isn't it?" And, "My whole body feels dead from the crap they're pouring into me. Do I look green to you?" And, "When I'm naked, I can see my heart beating. ~ Laura Anderson Kurk

Kevin looks at me and I know he isn't seeing the little girl I use to be, all pigtails and gangly limbs. He isn't seeing my mother's daughter or even my mother anymore. As his eyes linger over me, stopping here and there in the most uncomfortable places, I know he isn't really even seeing me as I am. The bloodshot eyes staring out of the alcohol-flushed face are seeing a girl, nearly of age, who owes him a tremendous debt of gratitude.
Rocky Evans ~ Gwenn Wright

Villain Foulon taken, my sister! Old Foulon taken, my mother! Miscreant Foulon taken, my daughter! Then, a score of others ran into the midst of these, beating their breasts, tearing their hair, and screaming, Foulon alive! Foulon who told the starving people they might eat grass! Foulon who told my old father that he might eat grass, when I had no bread to give him! Foulon who told my baby it might suck grass, when these breasts were dry with want! O mother of God, this Foulon! O Heaven our suffering! Hear me, my dead baby and my withered father: I swear on my knees, on these stones, to avenge you on Foulon! Husbands, and brothers, and young men, Give us the blood of Foulon, Give us the head of Foulon, Give us the heart of Foulon, Give us the body and soul of Foulon, Rend Foulon to pieces, and dig him into the ground, that grass may grow from him! ~ Charles Dickens

It's a proving ground thing. But once you realize you have responsibilities to others, you go a bit more lightly. My son used to be pure liquid evil in a bar fight. He doesn't go to bars or fight anymore--because he has a wife and a young daughter. If you attacked them, heaven help you--but he is peaceful and Big Picture now unto himself. ~ Kris Saknussemm

My own mother was evacuated at the age of five during World War Two and my father was a young man working as an ARP warden. This novel is purely fictitious, but I wanted to explore the traumas that many ordinary people of the war generation suffered, experiences which would be quite unimaginable to many of us today and then to contrast them with the issues we all face in the modern day. ~ Deborah Stone

Don't you believe that Jacob can be healed? some persisted, pressuring
Elizabeth to believe - just believe - and Jacob would be healed. The
underlying message was that Elizabeth's faith was not strong enough to save her son. I remembered then the same kind of statements David and I had heard when he was undergoing cancer treatment, when several well-intentioned people informed David that all he had to do to rid his body of cancer was to believe he was healed. I'd resented the implications then, and I resented them for my daughter now. People die. Good
people like David die too young, and innocent little children die, and the
strongest faith in the world cannot keep anyone on this earth forever. If
only the same Christians professing their faith in healing could clearly
see the flip side of that faith, that earth was not where we ultimately belonged.
If Jacob died, he would be going Home. ~ Mary Potter Kenyon

Dear dad,
in consequence of a trivial altercation with a Captain Tapper, of Wild Violet Lodge, whom I happened to step upon in the corridor of a train, I had a pistol duel this morning in the woods near Kalugano and am now no more. Though the manner of my end can be regarded as a kind of easy suicide, the encounter and the ineffable Captain are in no way connected with the Sorrows of Young Veen. In 1884, during my first summer in Ardis, I seduced your daughter, who was then twelve. Our torrid affair lasted till my return to Riverlane; it was resumed last June, four years later. That happiness has been the greatest event in my life, and I have no regrets. Yesterday, though, I discovered she had been unfaithful to me, so we parted. Tapper, I think, may be the chap who was thrown out of one of your gaming clubs for attempting oral intercourse with the washroom attendant, a toothless old cripple, veteran of the first Crimean War. Lots of flowers, please!
Your loving son, Van

He carefully reread his letter – and carefully tore it up. The note he finally placed in his coat pocket was much briefer.

Dad,
I had a trivial quarrel with a stranger whose face I slapped and who killed me in a duel near Kalugano. Sorry!
Van ~ Vladimir Nabokov

I am, a daughter, a sister, a grand-daughter, a niece, a cousin and a friend. A partner and a student. A young girl and a grown woman. I am confident and scared, terrified and excited. I am loving and caring and thoughtful and hopeful. I am sick and tired. I am shy and friendly and careful and careless. I am broken and whole. I am misunderstood, misguided and mislead. I am hardworking and determined, but a little scared on the inside. I wish on stars and dream my dreams. I pray to God and cry my tears. I smile on the outside while I'm hurting on the inside. I listen to others who won't listen to me. I walk on eggshells and i walk on fire. I believe in passion and true love. I am everything and nothing all at once.
- Unknown ~ Unknown

I Pray For This Girl

Oh yes! For the young girl
Who just landed on Mother Earth!
The one about to turn five with a smile
Or the other one who just turned nine
She is not only mine
My Mother's, Grandmother's
Neighbour's or friend's daughter
She is like a flower
Very fragile, yet so gorgeous
An Angel whose wings are invisible

I speak life to this young or older girl
She might not have a say
But expects the world to be a better place
Whether affluent or impoverished
No matter her state of mind
Her background must not determine
How she is treated
She needs to live, she has to thrive!

Lord God Almighty
Sanctify her unique journey
Save her from the claws of the enemy
Shield her against any brutality
Restore her if pain becomes a reality
Embrace her should joy pass swiftly
When emptiness fills her heart severely
May you be her sanctuary!

Dear Father, please give her
The honour to grow without being frightened
Hope whenever she feels forsaken
Contentment even after her heart was broken
Comfort when she is shaken
Courage when malice creeps in
Calm when she needs peace
Strength when she is weak
Freedom to climb on a mountain peak
And wisdom to tackle any season

Guide her steps, keep her from tumbling
My Lord, if she does sometimes stumble
Lift her up, so she can ri ~ Gift Gugu Mona

My grandmother could never have written a memoir, so 'The Gravedigger's Daughter' is a homage to her life, and to the lives of other young women of her generation, which are so rarely articulated. ~ Joyce Carol Oates

It was during my explanation to my young daughter that I finally realized why I had been drawn to this particular practice of law. Yes, some of my clients were just gaming the system. They were charlatans no better than the banks they were taking on. But some of mu clients were downtrodden and disadvantaged. They were true underdogs in society and I wanted to stand for them and keep them in their homes for as long as I possibly could. ~ Michael Connelly

When my daughter was young, she thought all electronic signs were mine. ~ Jenny Holzer

becoming one's self: Rabbi Zusya, when he was an old man, said, "In the coming world, they will not ask me: `Why were you not Moses?' They will ask me: Why were you not Zusya?"'=
If you doubt that we all arrive in this world with gifts and as a gift, pay attention to an infant or a very young child. A few years ago, my daughter and her newborn baby came to live ~ Parker J. Palmer

I'll take you home," I say, and my words are simple, obvious. I'm surprised when she follows me to the passenger door of the Merc and slips into the seat without hesitation, but she seems dazed somehow. Naïve, maybe. Maybe that's what got her into this mess in the first place. I suspect as much.
Young, naïve and vulnerable.
No way should she be out alone this late at night. No way should she be here, in this shithole part of Brighton. I feel the anger, at some unknown parents who should be worried sick, parents who should have taught her more fucking sense.
A father who should be driving around looking for his daughter, who should be protecting her from pieces of shit like that fucking waster back there.
I ignore the twitch in my jaw. Push aside that feeling.
She needs a ride home. Just a ride home. ~ Jade West

Up rose the wild old winter-king, And shook his beard of snow; I hear the first young hard-bell ring, 'Tis time for me to go! Northward o'er the icy rocks, Northward o'er the sea, My daughter comes with sunny locks: This land's too warm for me! ~ Charles Godfrey Leland

There was a Young Person in pink, Who called out for something to drink; But they said, 'O my daughter, there's nothing but water!' Which vexed that Young Person in pink. ~ Edward Lear

School of Rock. The best music school anywhere. This whole idea of getting kids not just taking lessons and learning notes and chords, but learning songs and playing with other young musicians, and getting out on stage ... I was so impressed that my daughter Cheyenne goes to School of Rock on Long Island. ~ Dee Snider

I don't think these women are stupid. I think they're selling a personality that's very marketable: Wouldn't it be fun if we were all gorgeous and didn't have a care? But creating a cultural icon out of someone who goes, I'm stupid, isn't it cute? makes me want to throw daggers at them! I want to say to them, My grandma did not fight for what she fought for, and my mother did not fight for what she fought for, so you can start telling women it's fun to be stupid. Saying that to young women, little girls, my daughter? It's not OK. ~ Reese Witherspoon

I had a breakthrough, I think my life just became calmer, I gave up drinking. My priorities changed as I had a young daughter. The group didn't want me to record for the Think Tank album ... so I took it as a sign to leave. ~ Graham Coxon

I'm an old man trying to give a young daughter advice, and it's like a monkey trying to teach table manners to a bear. A drunk driver took my son's life seventeen years ago and my wife has never been the same since. I've always seen the question of abortion in terms of Fred. I seem to be helpless to see it any other way, just as helpless as you were to stop your giggles when they came on you at that poetry reading, Frannie. Your mother would argue against it for all the standard reasons. Morality, she'd say. A morality that goes back two thousand years. The right to life. All our Western morality is based on that idea. I've read the philosophers. I range up and down them like a housewife with a dividend check in the Sears and Roebuck store. Your mother sticks with the Reader's Digest, but it's me that ends up arguing from feeling and her from the codes of morality. I just see Fred. He was destroyed inside. There was no chance for him. These right-to-life biddies hold up their pictures of babies drowned in salt, and arms and legs scraped out onto a steel table, so what? The end of a life is never pretty. I just see Fred, lying in that bed for seven days, everything that was ruined pasted over with bandages. Life is cheap, abortion makes it cheaper. I read more than she does, but she is the one who ends up making more sense on this one. What we do and what we think… those things are so often based on arbitrary judgments when they are right. I can't get over that. It's like a bl ~ Stephen King

Are you going to spank me, daddy? I'm a very bad girl! (bending over naked)

"Oh yeah daddy - spank my ass harder!!! ~ Alanah Skye

I didn't get to grow up and pull away from her and bitch about her with my friends and confront her about the things I'd wished she'd done differently and then get older and understand that she had done the best she could and realize that what she had done was pretty damn good and take her fully back into my arms again. Her death had obliterated that. It had obliterated me. It had cut me short at the very heigh of my youthful arrogance. It had forced me to instantly grow up and forgive her every motherly fault at the same time that it kept me forever a child, my life both ended and begun in that premature place where we'd left off. She was my mother, but I was motherless. I was trapped by her, but utterly alone. She would always be the empty bowl that no one could full. I'd have to fill it myself again and again and again. ~ Cheryl Strayed

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

Dorothy's coming up. I think she's tight."
"That's great." I picked up my bathrobe. "I was afraid I was going to have to get some sleep."
She was bending over looking for her slippers. "Don't be such an old fluff. You can sleep all day." She found her slippers and stood up in them. "Is she really as afraid of her mother as she says?"
"If she's got any sense. Mimi's poison."
Nora screwed up her dark eyes at me and asked slowly: "What are you holding out on me?"
"Oh, dear," I said, " I was hoping I wouldn't have to tell you. Dorothy is really my daughter. I didn't know what I was doing, Nora. It was spring in Venice and I was so young and there was a moon over the ... "
"Be funny. Don't you want something to eat? ~ Dashiell Hammett

I spend time with my family. I have got two daughters who are too young to know their Dad's a footballer. They just want to play with their Dad. I like to play golf, too, but apart from that, that's me, I'm afraid. ~ Alan Shearer

The worst part of it has been, I think, the adverse effect on family life. It kills off family conversation. And it's harder to get your children to read books. I became a confirmed reader when I was growing up in Glendale. I've loved reading all my life. Now I've got this daughter, Aissa, a very bright young lady
but it is a hard job to get her to read. Television's just too easy. ~ John Wayne

love. she liberated me to life, she continued to do that. and when she was in her final sickness i went out to san francisco and the doctor said she had 3 weeks to live, i asked her "would you come to north carolina?" she said yes. she had emphysema and lung cancer, i brought her to my home. she lived for a year and a half ..and when she was finally in extraneous she was on oxygen and fighting cancer for her life and i remembered her liberating me, and i said i hoped i would be able to liberate her, she deserved that from me. she deserved a great daughter and she got one. so in her last days, i said "i understand some people need permission to go… as i understand it you may have done what god put you here to do. you were a great worker, you must've been a great lover cause a lot of men and if I'm not wrong maybe a couple of woman risked their lives to love you. you were a piss poor mother of small children but a you were great mother of young adults, and if you need permission to go, i liberate you". and i went back to my house, and something said go back- i was in my pajamas, i jumped in my car and ran and the nurse said "she just gone". you see love liberates. it doesn't bind, love says i love you. i love you if you're in china, i love you if you're across town, i love you if you're in harlem, i love you. i would like to be near you, i would like to have your arms around me i would like to have your voice in my ear but thats not possible now, i love you so go. love liberate ~ Maya Angelou

Beauty is startling. She wears a gold shawl in the summer and sells seven kinds of honey at the flea market. She is young and old at once, my daughter and my grandmother. In school she excelled in mathematics and poetry ... Beauty will dance with anyone who is brave enough to ask her. ~ J. Ruth Gendler

I can only imagine the sort of havoc Oliver must have wreaked as a boy."
Oliver handed Minerva in, then climbed in to sit beside her. "We weren't that bad."
"Don't listen to him," Minerva exclaimed, her eyes twinkling. "One dull evening, he and his friends went to a ball dressed in the livery of the hired footmen. Then they proceeded to drink up the liquor, flirt and wink at the elderly ladies until they were all blushing, and make loud criticisms of the entertainment. After the lady of the house caught on to their scheme and rounded up some stout young men to throw them out, they stole a small stone cupid she had in her garden and sent her a ransom note for it."
"How the devil do you know that?" Oliver asked. "You were, what, eleven?"
"Twelve," Minerva said. "And it was all Gran's servants could talk about. Made quite a stir in society, as I recall. What was the ransom? A kiss for each of you from the lady's daughter?"
A faint smile touched Oliver's lips. "And she never did pay it. Apparently her suitors took issue with it. Not to mention her parents."
"Good heavens," Maria said.
"Come to think of it," Oliver mused aloud, "I believe Kirkwood still has that cupid somewhere. I should ask him."
"You're as bad as Freddy and my cousins," Maria chided. "They put soap on all the windows of the mayor's carriage on the very day he was supposed to lead a procession through Dartmouth. You should have seen him blustering when he discovered it."
Sabrina Jeffries

It was an oddly satisfying idea to feel bereft as I left my mother this time. We only feel bereft when we're deprived of something meaningful. ~ Laura Anderson Kurk

Here is Abraham Lincoln's touching condolence letter to 22-year-old Fanny McCullough, the daughter of a long-time friend:

"Dear Fanny

It is with deep grief that I learn of the death of your kind and brave Father; and, especially, that it is affecting your young heart beyond what is common in such cases. In this sad world of ours, sorrow comes to all; and, to the young, it comes with bitterest agony, because it takes them unawares. The older have learned to ever expect it. I am anxious to afford some alleviation of your present distress. Perfect relief is not possible, except with time. You can not now realize that you will ever feel better. Is not this so? And yet it is a mistake. You are sure to be happy again. To know this, which is certainly true, will make you some less miserable now. I have had experience enough to know what I say; and you need only to believe it, to feel better at once. The memory of your dear Father, instead of an agony, will yet be a sad sweet feeling in your heart, of a purer and holier sort than you have known before.
Please present my kind regards to your afflicted mother.
Your sincere friend,
A. Lincoln ~ Abraham Lincoln

My son and daughter lost their father quite young, so we keep him present with us. It's just a daily practice. ~ Patti Smith

Blood stains are not easy to remove. Yes, and they will enter the rooms and see my bedding. Perhaps a young girl will fit into my daughter's clothes. Or it'll all be a waste because they too lost a young daughter in the vadda raula. These clothes will haunt them. They will want to go back. How crazy! I don't want to be here and they don't want to be there. They can't be here and I can't be there. How absurd! It is like someone just did it in jest. What value does my life have? Zilch. Nobody thought of this? They live with my nightmares, I live with theirs. And then learn to ignore these sounds I hear from the crevices of the new house. Each night I plug my ears and shut my eyes. A new story over my story. The slate has been wiped clean. With blood. ~ Sakoon Singh

A fisherman in the month of May stood angling on the bank of the Thames with an artificial fly. He threw his bait with so much art, that a young trout was rushing toward it, when she was prevented by her mother. "Never," said she, "my child, be too precipitate, where there is a possibility of danger. Take due time to consider, before you risk an action that may be fatal. How know you whether yon appearance be indeed a fly, or the snare of an enemy? Let someone else make the experiment before you. If it be a fly, he will very probably elude the first attack: and the second may be made, if not with success, at least with safety." She had no sooner spoken, than a gudgeon seized the pretended fly, and became an example to the giddy daughter of the importance of her mother's counsel. FABLES, ROBERT DODSLEY, 1703-1764 ~ Robert Greene

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

And afterward, I will pour out my Spirit on all people. Your sons and daughters will prophesy, your old men will dream dreams, your young men will see visions. ~ Joel Osteen

I've lived a fast-paced life, but I had the best childhood. I didn't miss out on anything by having my daughter at a young age. ~ Keisha Castle-Hughes

When I became a father acting sort of took the place of what I did in my free time and my children became the main focus. I play a lot and my children play. Both my sons - my daughter's still too young really - have surpassed me with their music skills, which is wildly irritating. ~ Paul Bettany