My Father Once Told Me Quotes & Sayings

I was never the sort of child who believed in "monsters under the bed" or vampires, or who needed a night-light in his bedroom; on the contrary, my father ... once laughingly told my mother that he thought I might suffer from a type of benign psychosis called "antiparanoia," in which I seemed to believe that I was the object of an intricate universal conspiracy to make me so happy I could hardly stand it. — David Foster Wallace

Once when my father-in-law was leaving the house after lunch to return to the field to work, my mother-in-law said, 'Albert, you get right back in here and tell me you love me.' He grinned and jokingly said, 'Elsie, when we were married, I told you I loved you, and if that ever changes, I'll let you know.' It's hard to overuse the expression, 'I love you.' Use it daily. — Joe J. Christensen

Robin was a great kid. Smarter than her father at eight years old. She liked the oddest things. Like the instructions for a toy more than the toy itself. The credits of a movie instead of the movie. The way something was written. An expression on my face. Once she told me I looked like the sun to her, because of my hair. I asked her if I shined like the sun, and she told me, 'No, Daddy, you shine more like the moon, when it's dark outside. — Josh Malerman

Something else you should really know about me. When I get nervous, my fingers shake. I've noticed this a lot recently. When mother and father argue and their voices are falling around the small family apartment, when their voices are banging against my bedroom door, I can feel my fingers start to move. I tell my fingers to stop and, sometimes, they do. But if I look at my hands closely, once I've told them to stop, and I try to focus on keeping them as still as possible, I notice that they are still moving. — Kerem Mermutlu

My father once told me that some men are not worth having," Jon finished. "A
bannerman who is brutal or unjust dishonors his liege lord as well as himself. — George R R Martin

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

My father told me once not to expect anything from anybody so I wouldn't be disappointed. If somebody was nice and did nice things for me, I should be overjoyed, but I shouldn't go through life expecting it, which is very good advice. — Iris Apfel

My father once told me, and it's stuck with me to this day: As you walk through life, every time you fart it pushes you forward. — Bob Saget

My father once told me that I have a mind like a lint trap - I pull stuff out of everything, and a lot of it just clings. — Ellen Klages

My father once told me that anyone who worked for three dollars an hour owed it to himself to put in four dollars' worth of work. — Bill Russell

My father once told me of a trick question he used in a college class on forest fire control. If there was a fire coming from a certain direction and wind was coming from another, what was the best thing to do? The right answer was, "Run like hell and pray for rain," but few students ever got it. So allow yourself the freedom of knowing there are times to bail out, quit, run, leave the struggle, and have more time for joy. — Charlotte Sophia Kasl

My father once told me
that there are no gods;
only the cruel manipulations
of evil people
who pretended that their power was good
and their exploitation was love.
But if there are no gods;
why are we so hungry to believe in them?
Just because evil liars
stand between us and the gods
and block our view of them
does not mean that the bright halo
that surrounds each liar
is not the outer edges of a god, waiting
for us to find our way around the lie. — Orson Scott Card

I hope to have told you all this myself," Bail Organa's voice said. "I hope we have enjoyed many more happy years as a family, that we have seen the Empire fall, and that we have gone forth together to find General Kenobi and your brother. If so, this recording can serve only one purpose. You must be listening after my death, so let this be my chance to say once again how much I love you. No other daughter could ever have brought me more joy." Tears welled in Leia's eyes, but she fought them back. If she began to sob, she wouldn't be able to hear her father's voice any longer. He concluded, "Please know that my love for you, and your mother's love, endures long past our deaths. We are forever with you, Leia. In your brightest triumphs and your darkest troubles, always know that we are by your side." She — Claudia Gray

into art or music, how about that exhilarating moment when, during the 1982 Winter Olympics, the U.S. hockey team pulverized the Russians? Whether in front of the television, in the stands, or on the ice, we all became "one" in the euphoria of victory. My strong, he-man father once told me about a time he was standing on the edge of a cliff overlooking Yellowstone Falls - with tears in his eyes, he described how he became one with the deafening roar of the water. If you have experienced any of this, it's an inkling of the joy that will overtake us when we take just one glance at the Lord of joy. We will lose ourselves in Him. We will become one with Him. We will be "in Christ," we will have "put on Christ" at the deepest, most profound and exhilarating level. The Lord's wedding gift to us will be the joy of sharing totally in His nature without us losing our identity; no, we shall receive our identity. Thanks be to God for His indescribable gift! — Joni Eareckson Tada

My father once told me about a city on the other side of the sky.

Gods watch over us from there. — Mervin Ignacio

Sometimes I wonder whether, if I'd been the one that went for coffee and not Lesley May, my life would have been much less interesting and certainly much less dangerous. Could it have been anyone, or was it destiny? When I'm considering this I find it helpful to quote the wisdom of my father, who once told me, 'Who knows why the fuck anything happens?' Covent — Ben Aaronovitch

Why should I mind?" She drummed her fingertips against his knee. "Because you got asked to play baseball, while I got a lecture on circumspection, Jezebels, and leading men into sin?"
"Did you really?" He managed to sound annoyed, fascinated, and amused all at once.
"It's not funny."
"Of course it's not." He was quick to try and placate her. "But we can do something about those lectures real quick. All you have to do is marry me."
Coyote Bluff had too many secrets that weren't hers to share. She couldn't put him in that position. He was a federal marshal. And she'd seen what all the lies her father told had done to her mother. She'd died hating him.
The last remnants of her earlier contentment vanished. "I like my independence."
"Then I guess you'll have to get used to the lectures, Sheriff Jezebel," he replied. — Paula Altenburg

Could it have been anyone, or was it destiny? When I'm considering this I find it helpful to quote the wisdom of my father, who once told me, Who knows why the fuck anything happens? — Ben Aaronovitch

My dad had once told me a definition of faith and I had not forgotten it: 'Faith is to believe something you do not see. The result of that faith is to see what you believed'. — Braam Malherbe

A true Arab knows how to catch a fly in his hands,"
my father would say. And he'd prove it,
cupping the buzzer instantly
while the host with the swatter stared.
In the spring our palms peeled like snakes.
True Arabs believed watermelon could heal fifty ways.
I changed these to fit the occasion.
Years before, a girl knocked,
wanted to see the Arab.
I said we didn't have one.
After that, my father told me who he was,
"Shihab" - "shooting star"
a good name, borrowed from the sky.
Once I said, "When we die, we give it back?"
He said that's what a true Arab would say. — Naomi Shihab Nye

Esther, do not be alarmed. This is Blaise and I am using the Contact spell I told you about once. To prove my identity, as we agreed on that occasion, I am mentioning the time you caught me spying on my father. Now listen to me carefully. I have reason to fear for Gala's safety. She is in danger from the Council, and I need your help. Please take her to Kelvin's territory. I know about his reputation, but that's precisely why Neumanngrad might be the last place they would expect her to be. Please use whatever money you need - I will pay for everything. Stay at the inn on the southwest side of Neumanngrad when you get there, and try to be as inconspicuous as possible. I will hopefully join you soon. — Dima Zales

I wonder what Lena is doing now. I always wonder what Lena is doing. Rachel, too: both my girls, my beautiful, big-eyed girls. But I worry about Rachel less. Rachel was always harder than Lena, somehow. More defiant, more stubborn, less feeling . Even as a girl, she frightened me - fierce and fiery-eyed, with a temper like my father's once was.
But Lena . . . little darling Lena, with her tangle of dark hair and her flushed, chubby cheeks. She used to rescue spiders from the pavement to keep them from getting squashed; quiet, thoughtful Lena, with the sweetest lisp to break your heart. To break my heart: my wild, uncured, erratic, incomprehensible heart. I wonder whether her front teeth still overlap; whether she still confuses the words pretzel and pencil occasionally; whether the wispy brown hair grew straight and long, or began to curl.
I wonder whether she believes the lies they told her. — Lauren Oliver

It's a tradition my great-grandfather started almost a hundred years ago, after my father was born. He gave my father fifty newly minted silver dollars and explained that each time something really amazing happened to him, he had to return one of the dollars to the universe so that someone else could wish on it.
I smile, recalling how Patrick had once told me a story of his grandfather standing on the Brooklyn Bridge in 1936 and throwing a silver dollar into the water after his beloved Yankees won the World Series. They won it for the next three years too, and his grandfather always believed that it was his coins - good luck returned to the universe - that kept their streak alive ...
... My father always used to tell me that if you keep the coins, you throw things out of balance ... It's all about passing the luck on and thanking the world for whatever good things have happened to you. — Kristin Harmel

Father once told me that would-be lovers were similar to mountains. Two peaks, wonderfully akin and compatible in every way, may rise to the clouds but never witness each other's majesty because of the space between them. Like a man and a woman from different cities, they would never find each other. Or, if the peaks were blessed, as my parents had been, they might be two mountains of the same range and could bask in each other's company forever. — John Shors

You were not really in the area," she says now. "You look just like your father used to look when he lied to me." I laugh. "How's that?" "Like you've swallowed a lemon. Once, when your father was maybe five, he stole my nail polish remover. When I asked him about it, he lied. Eventually I found it in his sock drawer and told him so. He became hysterical. Turned out he read the label and thought it would make me - someone Polish - disappear. He hid it before it could do its job." Nana smiles. "I loved that boy, — Jodi Picoult

This is what I know. I look like my father. My father disappeared when he was seventeen years old. Hannah once told me that there is something unnatural about being older than your father ever got to be. When you can say that at the age of seventeen, it's a different kind of devastating. — Melina Marchetta

Celia, wait," Marco says, standing but not moving closer to her. "You are breaking my heart. You told me once that I reminded you of your father. That you never wanted to suffer the way your mother did for him, but you are doing exactly that to me. You keep leaving me. You leave me longing for you again and again when I would give anything for you to stay, and it is killing me."
"It has to kill one of us," Celia says quietly. — Erin Morgenstern

Wing watched her leave and turned to Otto. 'My father once told me that only the foolish man pulls on the tiger's tail as it dangles from the tree.' It was the first time that Otto had seen him smile.

Otto grinned at Wing. 'True, but how else do you find out if it's a tiger at all? — Mark Walden

I was always restless, always a roving spirit. When I was a little child I was always running away. I never got very far, but they were always having to come and fetch me. Once when I was about six, my father came to get me somewhere I'd gone, and he told me later he'd asked me, "Why are you so restless? Why can't you stay here with us?" and I said to him, "I want to go and see the world. I want to know the world like the palm of my hand. — Katherine Anne Porter

Eventually my father bought a vacation house for us in Port Saint Lucie, Florida. My dad's friend had died, so my father bought the house from his widow. We would go down there once a year, and my father believed that he had bought a good investment property. Twelve years later he would sell it at a loss. Almost immediately after the sale, Club Med built a resort there near where the New York Mets would set up their spring training camp soon after. I've tracked articles since then about how Port Saint Lucie has had the fastest growing home prices in the country. When I told my friends at Rye Country Day that we had bought a second home in Florida, they were unimpressed because it was not Palm Beach. When I told my friends in Tarrytown that we had bought a house in Florida, they were sad and asked me when my family was moving. Gosh, poor people can be really dumb sometimes. — Greg Fitzsimmons

As soon as we hit campus freshman year, Kennedy had pledged his father's fraternity. Despite my boyfriend's need for cliquish affiliation, I'd never shared that aspiration. He didn't seem to mind when I said I preferred not to rush any sororities, as long as I supported his future-politician need for brotherhood. He told me once he sort of liked that I was a GDI girlfriend.

"A GDI? What's that?"

He'd laughed and said, "It means you're goddamned independent. — Tammara Webber

The thing that most haunted me that day, however ... was the fact that these things had - apparently - actually occurred ... For all his attention to my historical education, my father had neglected to tell me this: history's terrible moments were real. I understand now, decades later, that he could never have told me. Only history itself can convince you of such a truth. And once you've seen that truth - really seen it - you can't look away. — Elizabeth Kostova

My father had once told me the story of how, when he was in the work camp, a truckload of giant logs was brought in to be chopped. He was on ax duty with a gang of twelve. It was a dreadfully hot summer and each swing of the blade was torture. He hacked at a log and there was the unmistakable sound of metal hitting metal. He bent down and found a mushroom-shaped chunk of lead embedded in the trunk. A bullet. He counted the rings from the perimeter to the bullet and found they matched his age exactly.

We never escape ourselves, he said to me years later. — Colum McCann

My father told me once that we are on earth to learn. God wants us to receive everything that life was meant to teach. Then we take what we've learned, and it becomes our offering to God and to mankind. But we have to live in order to learn. And sometimes we have to fight in order to live. — Amy Harmon

O Malalai of Maiwand, Rise once more to make Pashtuns understand the song of honor, Your poetic words turn worlds around, I beg you, rise again My father told the story of Malalai to anyone who came to our house. I loved hearing the story and the songs my father sang to me, and the way my name floated on the wind when people called it. — Malala Yousafzai

I once asked my father for a dollar for the school picnic. He told me how he once killed a grizzly bear with his loose-leaf notebook. — Bill Cosby

It's not easy to kill someone, Rowena. To stare at them, face to face, that moment when you both realize you've dealt them a mortal blow. There is something that passes between you. My father once told me it's a part of their soul that creeps into you. A part that will haunt you all of your life. (Stryder) — Kinley MacGregor

My father once told me love is magic, sir. — Victoria Alexander

The Redwood Tree

My father once told me a story about an old redwood tree - how she stood tall and proud - her sprawling limbs clothed in emerald green. With a smile, he described her as a mere sapling, sheltered by her elders and basking in the safety of the warm, dappled light. But as this tree grew taller, she found herself at the mercy of the cruel wind and the vicious rain. Together, they tore relentlessly at her pretty boughs, until she felt as though her heart would split in two.

After a long, thoughtful pause, my father turned to me and said, "My daughter, one day the same thing will happen to you. And when that time comes, remember the redwood tree. Do not worry about the cruel wind or the vicious rain - but do as that tree did and just keep growing. — Lang Leav

My father once told me when I was a young girl that I was destined to do great things. His belief in my abilities and ambition is rooted deeply in the spirit of Malawians; resilient and determined for a better Malawi and a better Africa. — Joyce Banda

DESPERATELY SEEKING EPIC You're my father. I don't know much about you. I know your name is Paul James, you're a thrill seeker, and once upon a time you did stunts and people called you 'Epic.' I've been told you don't know about me. That it's complicated. But for me it's simple. Here's the thing: I'm twelve years old . . . and I'm dying. And as much as this could crush my mother, I have to meet you before I go. In time, I'm sure she'll understand. She's still in love with you. So, Epic, if you read this, please come back. You don't have to be my dad. You don't even have to tell me you love me or you're sorry. Just come see me. — B.N. Toler

My father once said something very shrewd about me to a woman journalist who had told him how courageous she thought I was for always speaking my mind. My father said, 'If you couldn't care less what anyone says about you, then it's not courage.' — Gore Vidal

My father once told me that a happy ending is just the place where you choose to stop telling the story. So this is where I choose to stop. More things are still going to happen, of course, some good, some bad. Some things never get any better. When people die they stay dead. None of us knows why we love, or why we stop loving, or why everyone we love we lose. — Leah Stewart

You and I certainly had out issues, Cooper. But I never, for a moment, doubted that you could be trusted. My father told me once that your word was good amber. I have no reason to believe otherwise. — Jayne Castle

I will tell you something my father once told me. The difference between a brave man and a coward is very simple. It is a problem of love. A coward loves only himself ... The brave man loves other men first and himself last. (From Meyer's The Son) — Phillipp Meyer

The truth of living is proved not by the inevitability of death but by the wonder that we lived at all. Remembering lives from the past ratifies that truth, more and more so the older we get. When I was growing up, my father told me once, "Do by look for happiness; life itself is happiness." It took me years to understand what he meant. The value of a life lived; the sheer value of living. — Nina Sankovitch

My father once told me that respect for truth comes close to being the basis for all morality. 'Something cannot emerge from nothing,' he said. This is profound thinking if you understand how unstable 'the truth' can be. — Frank Herbert

My father told me once that the most important thing every man should know is what he would die for. — Tana French

My father once told me that it's not enough for a man to be lucky; that a guy has to know when that streak is on for him. — Henry Mosquera

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

My father once told me that the most important thing every man should know is what he would die for. If you don't know that, he said, what are you worth? Nothing. You're not a man at all. — Tana French

She's kept her love for him as alive as the summer they first met. In order to do this, she's turned life away. Sometimes she subsists for days on water and air. Being the only known complex life-form to do this, she should have a species named after her. Once Uncle Julian told me how the sculptor and painter Alberto Giacometti said that sometimes just to paint a head you have to give up the whole figure. To paint a leaf, you have to sacrifice the whole landscape. It might seem like you're limiting yourself at first, but after a while you realize that having a quarter-of-an-inch of something you have a better chance of holding on to a certain feeling of the universe than if you pretended to be doing the whole sky.
My mother did not choose a leaf or a head. She chose my father. And to hold on to a certain feeling, she sacrificed the world. — Nicole Krauss

And my parents knew, because Barbara [Stanwyck] called their house a few times looking for me. I finally told them we were seeing each other, although I didn't give them all the details. They met her once, at a party at Clifton Webb's house, and my mother was upset that I was in love with an older woman. As for my father, as with most other events in my life, he was not in my corner. And I eventually told Spencer Tracy about it. All he said was, "Wonderful! Are you happy? If you're happy, that's all that matters. — Robert Wagner

My father once told me that American democracy is a people's democracy at heart, and that it therefore can be as great as the American people, or as fallible. It depends on all of us. But our system is more fragile than we know. To sustain it, we must always cherish the ideals on which it was founded, remain vigilant against the dark forces that threaten it, and actively engage in the process of making it work. — George Takei

My mother told me once that she and my father agreed that I would not be brought up Jewish in Chicago. She had me going to a Methodist church. — Wesley Clark