Our Daughter Quotes & Sayings

Her arms tightened around our daughter as if she was afraid I was going to snatch her away. "Get out."

"Katiebear, I'm so sorry."

"I hate you," she whispered, he eyes filling with tears. "I wish you were dead because then I could have my children back."

I stumbled away from the bed, horrified, and watched as she fell asleep as if I'd never even been there.

Jesus Christ, what had I done? — Nicole Jacquelyn

Our meeting was inevitable. Our love was terminal. But God and Goddess damn it, our daughter was no mistake at all. — Edward Morris

Of course the welfare of our children is a legitimate state interest. However, limiting marriage to opposite-sex couples fails to further this interest. Instead, needlessly stigmatizing and humiliating children who are being raised by the loving couples targeted by Virginia's Marriage Laws betrays that interest. E. S.-T. [the 15-year-old daughter of two of the plaintiffs], like the thousands of children being raised by same-sex couples, is needlessly deprived of the protection, the stability, the recognition and the legitimacy that marriage conveys ... — Arenda L. Wright Allen

For the record, there were no framed pictures of me around our house, and the only class portrait Dad had ever ordered was the one from Sparta Elementary in which I'd sat, knees glued together, in front of a background that looked like Yosemite, sporting pink overalls and a lazy eye. "This is classic," Dad said. "That they shamelessly send me an order form so I can pay $69.95 for prints large and small of a photo in which my daughter looks as if she just suffered a great blow to her head - it just shows you, we are simply strapped to a motorized assembly line moving through this country. We're supposed to pay out, shut up or get tossed in the rejects bin. — Marisha Pessl

Our daughter was born in Chicago, and she's already showing it. The temperature has to be approaching zero for her to wear a hat. — Aleksandar Hemon

We're children of God through our blood kinship with Christ. We're also sons and daughters of Adam and Eve, with a hereditary craving for forbidden fruit salad. — Barbara Brown Taylor

A country is mostly the people in it," Maud said. "I don't love England. My parents died a long time ago, and my brother has disowned me. I love Germany. For me, Germany is my wonderful husband, Walter; my misguided son, Erik; my alarmingly capable daughter, Carla; our maid, Ada, and her disabled son; my friend Monika and her family; my journalistic colleagues . . . I'm staying, to fight the Nazis. — Ken Follett

Phone are wonderful instruments, but I wouldn't want our daughter to marry one. — Erma Bombeck

I ask everyone to join me to create a society free of trafficking. We need to do this for all our daughters. — Anuradha Koirala

I didn't know yet how wanting to die could be a bloodsong in your body that lives with you your whole life. I didn't know then how deeply my mother's song had swum into my sister and into me. I didn't know that something like wanting to die could take form in one daughter as the ability to quietly surrender, and in the other as the ability to drive into death head-on. I didn't know we were our mother's daughters after all. — Lidia Yuknavitch

I grew up watching science fiction with my dad. It was kind of our little secret. It was our bonding time as father and daughter. — Katee Sackhoff

They were childless - Dan Needham suggested that their sexual roles might be so "reversed" as to make childbearing difficult - and their attendance at Little League games was marked by a constant disapproval of the sport: that little girls were not allowed to play in the Little League was an example of sexual stereotyping that exercised the Dowlings' humorlessness and fury. Should they have a daughter, they warned, she would play in the Little League. They were a couple with a theme - sadly, it was their only theme, and a small theme, and they overplayed it, but a young couple with such a burning mission was quite interesting to the generally slow, accepting types who were more typical in Gravesend. Mr. Chickering, our fat coach and manager, lived in dread of the day the Dowlings might produce a daughter. Mr. Chickering was of the old school - he believed that only boys should play baseball, and that girls should watch them play, or else play soft-ball. — John Irving

My wife is funny. And I dabble in it. So being funny is big around our house. But what's surprised me is my daughter can do an English accent. I don't know how she learned this. — Jerry Seinfeld

Because whatever has happened to humanity, whatever is currently happening to humanity, it is happening to all of us. No matter how hidden the cruelty, no matter how far off the screams of pain and terror, we live in one world. We are one people. My illness proved that. As well as my understanding that Generose's lost daughter belongs to all of us. It is up to all of us to find her; it is up to us to do our best to make her whole again. There is only one daughter, one father, one mother, one son, one aunt or uncle, one dog, one cat, donkey, monkey, or goat in the universe, after all: the one right in front of you. — Alice Walker

Ranger is one of the few civilians in Trenton with a permit to carry concealed. He owns office buildings in Boston, has a daughter in Florida by a failed marriage, has worked worldwide as a mercenary, and has a moral code that isn't entirely in sync with our legal system. I have no idea who the heck he is . . . but I like him. — Janet Evanovich

As with the bud, so with the blossom. A boy is the only thing known from which a man can be made. I hope that we as parents are teaching our children that they are the sons and daughters of God, and that they have the capacity to become like him. It was the old Edinburgh weaver who prayed, 'O God, help me to hold a high opinion of myself.' Likewise I would counsel young people to hold a high opinion of themselves, to remember who they really are, and to put their faith in their Heavenly Father. — Paul H. Dunn

I was a daughterless mother. I had nowhere to put the things a mother places on her daughter. The nail polish I used to paint our toenails hardened. Our favorite videos gathered dust. Her small apron was in a box in the attic. Her shoes - the sparkly ones, the leopard rain boots, the ballet slippers - stood in a corner. — Ann Hood

We are all the sons or daughters of immigrants - some more recent than others - but all dedicated to the triumph of an idea that serves as the touchstone of what it means to be an American. This America is the only America that we have hitherto known - if being conservative has anything to do with conserving the principles of our past, then no conservative has any business bashing legal immigration. — Jack Kemp

My little boy loves mambo, and my daughter, besides Justin Bieber, likes bachata - in our house, we're always singing. — Thalia

Numerous things that go on such as the way Houston interacts with my family; we're treated in a first-class way. They helped us when my wife lost our baby daughter in a miscarriage. They help with anything you ask of them because they are a very caring organization with positive attitudes about its players. — Johnathan Joseph

Would we send our daughters off to have sex if it would benefit our country? Yet, we send our sons off to kill when we think it would benefit our country! — Leonard Ravenhill

We're so distracted, we're missing out own lives. The parent who records his kid's dance recital or first steps or graduation is so busy trying to capture the moment--to create a thing that proves that they were there--they miss out on actually living and enjoying the moment.
I've done this before with my camera. I have jockeyed for position, bumping elbows with other parents so I could get into the best spot to look through the viewfinder of my SLR to capture the moment of my daughter's dance recital. Five-year-old Phoebe was so cute in her little sailor outfit, tapping away. And I got some great pictures. It's just that while I remember getting the pictures, I do not recall the moment. So much of the time we don't trust ourselves to experience our world without stuff. Things so often don't enhance our lives, but are barriers to fully living our lives. — Dave Bruno

In the book (Savvy Stories) you see some very real, very personal moments. The first week of Savvy's life was the longest week of ours. We spent five days in the NICU (Neonatal Intensive Care Unit) worrying that our newborn daughter might die. It was touch and go for a while, and it was extremely difficult to write about. Chapter two gets a lot of people crying. But because we put that honesty out there, readers said "Okay, I can trust this guy." Then they were better able to laugh with us, too. — Dan Alatorre

I am," said Tessa. "I am Theresa Gray, daughter of a Greater Demon and Elizabeth Gray, who was born Adele Starkweather, one of your kind. I was the wife of William Herondale, who was the head of the London Institute, and I was the mother of James and Lucie Herondale. Will and I raised our Shadowhunter children to protect by the Laws of the Clave and Covenant, and to keep to the Accords. — Cassandra Clare

There is a balance, a kind of standoff between the time continuum and the human entity, our frail bundle of soma and psyche. We eventually succumb to time, it's true, but time depends on us. We carry it in our muscles and genes, pass it on to the next set of time-factoring creatures, our brown-eyed daughters and jug-eared sons, or how would the world keep going. Never mind the time theorists, the cesium devices that measure the life and death of the smallest silvery trillionth of a second ... We were the only crucial clocks, our minds and bodies, way stations for the distribution of time. — Don DeLillo

There's a girl calm people don't know about. It's a girl teen standstill. A motionless peace. It doesn't come from anywhere but inside us, and it only lasts for a few years. It's born from being a not woman yet. It's free flowing and invisible. It's the eye of the violent storm you call my teenage daughter. In this place we are undisturbed by all the moronic things you think about us. Our voices like rain falling. We are serene. Smooth. With more perfect hair and skin than you will ever again know. Daughters of Eve. — Lidia Yuknavitch

But I realize now that the toughest choices, the ones that will haunt us for the rest of our lives, are ones that my mom is still sheltering me from. — Susan Ee

Plato spoke of the Sisters of Fate on the last 3 pages of his book, "The Republic" when he said: "Then the Sisters of Fate take all of our choices and weave them on their loom into the fabric of destiny. Hear the word of Lachesis, the daughter of Necessity. Mortal souls, behold a new cycle of life and mortality. Your genius will not be allotted to you, but you will choose your genius; and let him who draws the first lot have the first choice, and the life which he chooses shall be his destiny. Virtue is free, and as a man honors' or dishonors her he will have more or less of her; the responsibility is with the chooser - God is justified" [Quote from Plato's Republic written 360BCE In the Public Domain] — D.M. Hoover

We live in a time when we have a communal duty to receive and broadcast love. We must set aside our repeating arguments and get a handle on our destructive depressions.
pg vi — Michael Ben Zehabe

Control Master Theory suggests that our psychological problems come about in much the same way: our decision to make ourselves unhappy because one or both of our parents were unhappy is just as altruistic as our friend's decision to run through flames to save his daughter. — Lewis Engel

Fathers are still considered the most important "doers" in our culture, and in most families they are that. Girls see them as thefamily authorities on careers, and so fathers' encouragement and counsel is important to them. When fathers don't take their daughters' achievements and plans seriously, girls sometimes have trouble taking themselves seriously. — Stella Chess

Our daughters are the most precious of our treasures, the dearest possessions of our homes and the objects of our most watchful love. — Margaret Elizabeth Sangster

Your daughter's a very enthusiastic scientific worker."
"I know," I said rather disconsolately. "It worries me sometimes. It doesn't seem natural, if you know what I mean. I feel she ought to be - more human - more keen on having a good time. Amuse herself - fall in love with a nice boy or two. After all, youth is the time to have one's fling - not to sit poring over test tubes. It isn't natural. In our young days we were having fun - flirting - enjoying ourselves - you know. — Agatha Christie

And when I'm feeling glum, because Gregory's away of because my daughter's just hurled her full glass of milk at my head, or just because time is passing, I like to scroll through the annual East Trawley High School online newsletter, which gets mass-emailed by Shanice Morain, who's on her second marriage and who cohosts her own Christian Soul-Support and Teen Prayer Variety Hour on local TV and who's just been appointed our class secretary. In the current Alumni Notes section I read that Katelynn Streedmore has just been named the head dietitian at the Jamesburg Assisted Care Facility, that Cal Malstrup and his wife Chelsea Marie have just welcomed their fifth bundle of joy, whom they've christened Blake-Jorlinda Malstrup, and that Becky Randle is still the Queen of England. — Paul Rudnick

We begin to resemble what we focus on. If we devote our lives to our jobs, then we mentally take the office to our daughter's lacrosse game. — Paul Miller

The greatest mission of woman is to give life, earth-life, through honorable marriage, to the waiting spirits, our Father's spirit children who anxiously desire to come to dwell here in this mortal state. All the honor and glory that can come to men and women is but a dim thing whose luster shall fade in comparison to the high honor, the eternal glory, the ever-enduring happiness that shall come to the woman who fulfils the first great duty and mission that devolves upon her to become the mother of the sons and daughters of God — Melvin J. Ballard

As ecstatic as I was at the birth of my daughter, I felt selfish bringing her, and later my son, into our screwed-up world. — Jill Greenberg

I'm not a complete idiot, you know," I tell him. "I do think about alternatives if things were to change in Westfall."
Bishop swings his legs off the sofa and sits forward, facing me. "I have never, not for a single second, thought you were an idiot, Ivy."
"You listen to your father, too, don't you?" I ask him.
Bishop looks down at his clasped hands, then back up at me. "Sometimes I just think that because of who we are... the president's son and the founder's daughter..." He rolls his eyes, making me smile. "It's doubly important that we think for ourselves. We're not our parents. We don't have to agree with everything they stand for. — Amy Engel

I had no illusions that now, in some final and dramatic flash of revelation, we would understand one another. We were done. It was a fact of my life
intractable and sad
that our relationship had been a failure. Still, with her prognosis came one last chance to be her daughter. [p. 163] — Dani Shapiro

Isaac's son Jacob has a daughter, Dinah. Dinah is kidnapped and raped - apparently a customary form of courtship at the time, since the rapist's family then offers to purchase her from her own family as a wife for the rapist. Dinah's brothers explain that an important moral principle stands in the way of this transaction: the rapist is uncircumcised. So they make a counteroffer: if all the men in the rapist's hometown cut off their foreskins, Dinah will be theirs. While the men are incapacitated with bleeding penises, the brothers invade the city, plunder and destroy it, massacre the men, and carry off the women and children. When Jacob worries that neighboring tribes may attack them in revenge, his sons explain that it was worth the risk: "Should our sister be treated like a whore?" 13 Soon afterward they reiterate their commitment to family values by selling their brother Joseph into slavery. — Steven Pinker

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

I was inspired to write Countdown 'til Daddy Comes Home when I searched for books to help my 4 year daughter cope with her father deploying to Afghanistan and found nothing that quite fit our situation. My book is not only a great story for kids it has real suggestions for parents on how to keep you family connected during deployments or frequent business travel. — Kristin Ayyar

My dear little big Marianne,
... I hope that you will grow up to be a healthy, happy and strong human being. I hope you will experience the most beautiful things the world has to give... And then you must have children... And think of our evenings of discussion in bed, about all the important things of life... And think of our beautiful three weeks at the seashore - of the sunrise, and when we walked barefoot along the beach from Bansin to Uckeritz, and when I pushed you before me on the rubber float, and when we read books together. We had so many beautiful things together, my child, and you must experience them all over again, and much more besides... And be happy as often as you can - every day is precious.
My love for you shall accompany you your whole life long.

(From Rose Schlosinger to her daughter, 1943) — Karen Payne

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

Did you see her?" the Marid said nervously, looking at her with great dark eyes. "Our daughter. Standing on the Gear. Dis you see her?"
"What?" said September - and then she winked out, like someone blowing out a candle, and all the field was still. — Catherynne M Valente

Developing Christlike attributes in our lives is not an easy task, especially when we move away from generalities and abstractions and begin to deal with real life. The test comes in practicing what we proclaim. The reality check comes when Christlike attributes need to become visible in our lives - as husband or wife, as father or mother, as son or daughter, in our friendships, in our employment, in our business, and in our recreation. We can recognize our growth, as can those around us, as we gradually increase our capacity to 'act in all holiness before [Him]' (D&C 43:9). — Dieter F. Uchtdorf

Drons change the way politicians think about war. You already have society's barriers against war dropping, and now you have a technology that takes the barriers to the ground. We can carry it out without having to deal with some of the consequences of sending our sons and daughters into harm's way. — P. W. Singer

My family always comes first. My world revolves around my husband, Peter, our daughter, Victoria, and our son, William, but not necessarily in that order. Then, it's this fascinating world of publishing that devours most of my days and many nights. — Dorothea Benton Frank

Listen, I traipse no I run no I sprint--a fat, impotent ghoul sprung straight from the cellar of my childhood home--past the pregnant girl with five skeletal children and the nun and the synagogue with its windows stoned through and I'm headed directly for my daughter, Sylvia, at her school where she's stationed with classmates of wannabe punks and black boys with their heads shaved and every one of them, apes, gushing out their hormones as I sprint to the edge of the Earth where Sylvia studies the canon of our national literature that I'm desperately trying to forget. — Leland Pitts-Gonzalez

Well the beauty of 'Iyanla: Fix My Life' is that men are in every show. To our surprise, some of the deepest healing demonstrations have been with the men - the sons, the fathers, the husbands - because they agree to participate with the wife or the daughter or whatever it is we are looking at, and it is there. — Iyanla Vanzant

In telling our stories, we have to give up part of our imagination, because if I ever told my daughter about this night, I would have to choose the details to tell it, limit the possibilities. — Daniel Chacon

[ ... ]Since then it's been passed from mother to daughter, along with The Face."
"The Face?" Lucas asked.
"That Launched a Thousand Ships," Daphne said, repeating the title automatically. "It's our curse. — Josephine Angelini

The art of music, rather more daughter than imitator of nature, in her impressive and mysterious language minding and educating us, rouses directly our temper and rules us to the depths of our souls. — Carl Maria Von Weber

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

Our mythology tells us so much about fathers and sons ... What do we know about mothers and daughters? ... Our power is so oblique, so hidden, so ethereal a matter, that we rarely struggle with our daughters over actual kingdoms or corporate shares. On the other hand, our attractiveness dries as theirs blooms, our journey shortens just as theirs begins. We too must be afraid and awed and amazed that we cannot live forever and that our replacements are eager for their turn, indifferent to our wishes, ready to leave us behind. — Anne Roiphe

Two adolescent girls on a hot summer night
hardly the material of great literature, which tends to endow all male experience (that of those twin brothers who found themselves adrift so many years ago in the dark northern woods for instance) with universal radiance. Faithless sons, wars and typhoons, fields of blood, greed and knives: our literature's full of such stories. And yet suppose for an instant that it wasn't the complacent father but his bored daughter who was the Prime Mover; suppose that what came first wasn't an appetite for drama but the urge to awaken it. Mightn't we then permit a single summer in the lives of two bored girls to represent an essential stage in the history of the universe? — Kathryn Davis

I sat and three hours later realized I had been seized by an idea that started short but grew to wild size by day's end. The concept was so riveting I found it hard at sunset to flee the library basement and take the bus home to reality: my house, my wife, and our baby daughter. — Ray Bradbury

There is no amount of money I can make which could buffer my daughter from the horrors that will explode in our society if we do not address the huge amount of suffering in our midst. — Marianne Williamson

I guess she was a life line
Sewing our family fabric together
From me to dad to her
Gave me a sense of continuity
Especially when my daughter was born
As she was slipping away — Richard L. Ratliff

Haggis is a brand of nappies.' I said. 'They're good, we used them for our daughter.'
'Haggis is a kind of food too,' said Semyon, shaking his head. 'Although as far as taste goes, there's probably not much difference. — Sergei Lukyanenko

My journey started with the understanding that poor parents share the universal desire for education for their children. No family in our experience has ever turned down educational support for their daughter. — Ann Cotton

The first moment I saw my wife breastfeed our daughter minutes after birth, I was hit with a thunderbolt of understanding and awe for the miracle of it all, and I still feel that way. — David Alan Basche

Those who seek to glorify biblical womanhood have forgotten the dark stories. They have forgotten that the concubine of Bethlehem, the raped princess of David's house, the daughter of Jephthah, and the countless unnamed women who lived and died between the lines of Scripture exploited, neglected, ravaged, and crushed at the hand of patriarchy are as much a part of our shared narrative as Deborah, Esther, Rebekah, and Ruth. — Rachel Held Evans

I believe that the one thing that has come out of this
extraordinary
meeting this morning is an awareness that we have, perhaps, been careless about the critical relationship between human and pegasus, careless in our resignation that no better bond than what we are accustomed to can exist. The king agrees with you that his daughter and Lrrianay's son suggest a different way. But the king's view, and indeed hope, for that way is diametrically opposed to your own. Bring what the histories can tell us both, and the councils will decide whose concept of the way forward has more merit.
The king is prepared to consider the possibility that your outburst arose from a dedication to the well-being of our country too profound for restraint; but he is only barely prepared so to consider it. You may leave us. Now. — Robin McKinley

I would turn the question around to people, especially those reporters who wrote some of those articles. Are you advocating our daughters shouldn't learn self-defense? Because that's what was taught at that rally. — Matt Shea

Cookie had taken her daughter amber to school then walked the thirty-something feet to work earlier. Our business was on the second floor of Calamity's, my dad's bar, which sat right in front of our apartment building. The short commute was nice and rarely invloved rabid raccoons. — Darynda Jones

It's a father's place to hate the son-in-law. It's our place to put them through h*ll just to make sure they know what they're doing. — Sam Crescent

One of the bonds between Lily and me is that we both suffer with our teeth. She is twenty years my junior but we wear bridges, each of us. Mine are at the sides, hers are in front. She has lost the four upper incisors. It happened while she was still in high school, out playing golf with her father, whom she adored. The poor old guy was a lush and far too drunk to be out on a golf course that day. Without looking or given warning, he drove from the first tee and on the backswing struck his daughter. It always kills me to think of that cursed hot July golf course, and this drunk from the plumbing supply business, and the girl of fifteen bleeding. Damn these weak drunks! Damn these unsteady men! I can't stand these clowns who go out in public as soon as they get swacked to show how broken-hearted they are. But Lily would never hear a single word against him and wept for him sooner than for herself. She carries his photo in her wallet. — Saul Bellow

As far as this life is concerned, [Jesus] was born of Mary and of Elohim; he came here as an offspring of that Holy Man who is literally our Father in heaven. He was born in mortality in the literal and full sense as the Son of God. He is the Son of his father in the same sense that all morals are the sons and daughters of their fathers. — Bruce R. McConkie

Something wild was going on in that coffin ... .I was growing shoots and leaves and blossoms. Moss. Bugs. Worms. She leaned over my corpse to kiss my lips, but they were warm instead of cold, and then she realized the dead girl wasn't me at all. Who was that? Who was that dead girl squirming with life? And then she realized- That was her. Our bodies had been switched. Mine for hers. — Laura Kasischke

We mothers are learning to mark our mothering success by our daughters' lengthening flight. — Letty Cottin Pogrebin

Precious Auntie, what is our name? I always meant to claim it as my own. Come help me remember. I'm not a little girl anymore. I'm not afraid of ghosts. Are you still mad at me? Don't you recognize me? I am LuLing, your daughter. — Amy Tan

The picture of Chelsea and me that flashed around the world showed a happy mother-daughter team perched on our pachyderm and watching a rare Asian rhino. Later, when we got back to Washington, James Carville remarked: "Don't you just love it? You spent two years trying to get people better health care and they tried to kill you. You and Chelsea rode an elephant, and they loved you! — Hillary Rodham Clinton

There's no "winning" when it comes to dealing with Internet trolls. Conventional wisdom says, "Don't engage. It's what they want." Is it? Are you sure our silence isn't what they want? Are you sure they care what we do at all? From where I'm sitting, if I respond, I'm a sucker for taking the bait. If I don't respond, I'm a punching bag. I'm the idiot daughter of an embarrassed dead guy. On the record. Forever. — Lindy West

Daughter of my heart,' was the message Brimstone sent just for Karou. She wanted to cry again right here in the court, thinking of it. 'Twice-daughter, my joy. Your dream is my dream, and your name is true. You are all of our hope. — Laini Taylor

For 10 years, I'd been working as a freelance writer and editor, making money but not a living. It was a good arrangement family-wise, allowing me to stay home with our daughter, but not so great financially or, sometimes, ego-wise. — Will Allison

If I want my daughter to try something, I eat it in front of her repeatedly without forcing the issue and, with some trial and error, the world is our oyster! — Alexandra Guarnaschelli

My concern is the holistic development of society. No one should go back, everyone must move forward. Enough time has been spent going backwards; now let us pledge to stride ahead, whether it's in education, health, agriculture or education of our daughters. This Government belongs to the poor. It is to support the destitute. — Narendra Modi

If I have a foreign accent - which I much regret - it is cosmopolitan, but not Teutonic. I am a daughter of the great Jewish race, and my somewhat uncultivated language is the outcome of our enforced wanderings. — Sarah Bernhardt

I particularly enjoy cello music because our daughter plays the cello. I have listened to her practice for so many hours that I am familiar with the music written for that instrument. I am also fond of the popular music of the 1930s because my future husband and I danced to it so many Saturday nights when we were in college. — Beverly Cleary

In giving our daughter life, her father and I had also given her death, something I hadn't realized until that new creature flailed her arms in what was now infinite space. We had given her disease and speeding cars and flying cornices: once out of the fortress that had been myself, she would never be safe again ... We disappoint our kids and they disappoint us, and sometimes they grow up into people we don't like very much. We go on loving, though what we love may be more memory than actuality. And until the day we die we fear the phone that rings in the middle of the night. — Mary Cantwell

We spent afternoons kicking around in the sand, picking through the seaweed for shells, making headdresses of washed-up fishing ropes and hats from Styrofoam cups. Beach rats, we were called.

We stopped brushing our hair, and it hung in tangles spun by the salt air. We sprayed Sun-In across our heads and let it turn our hair orange in patches. Our skin peeled, and we didn't much care.

We woke up to the feel of sand in our sheets. We covered ourselves in baby oil and iodine and let the sun bake our skin. We smelled like Love's Baby Soft perfume, like summer all year long. We were tanned, with freckles across our noses. — Ilie Ruby

Our rages, daughters of despair, creep and squirm like worms. Prayer is the only form of revolt which remains upright. — Georges Bernanos

Alone, her soul destroyed and her heart bereft and empty, the Lady Ninnia touched her amulet and closed her eyes. "No," she breathed, "I was wrong. This time, my wisdom has failed me. Our daughter is not ready. To become the Handmaiden of Orion, one must know terrible grief in order to learn compassion." She gazed after her husband and shook her head sorrowfully. "Even the deaths of us, her parents, are not, I fear, enough. May she find what she needs upon that dark and deadly road upon which I have sent her. My poor, poor child - farewell. — Robin Jarvis

Investing in girls' education is the very best thing we can do, not just for our daughters and granddaughters, but for their families, their communities, and their countries. — Michelle Obama

Called to give you the good news. I asked our daughter to marry me and she accepted. Congratulations, I will officially your son-in-law. Now, do you want me to call you zmum straightaway, or wait until after the wedding?"
I lew through the ir in a dive tht finally tackled him, wrenching the phone away. Bones was laughing so hard he had to breathe to get it all out.
"Mom? Are you there? Mom ... ?"
"You might want to give her a moment, Kitten. I believe she fainted. — Jeaniene Frost

But who made the law that we should not hope in our daughters? We women subscribe to that law more than anyone. Until we change all this, it is still a man's world, which women will always help to build. — Buchi Emecheta

One gives way to the temptation, only to rise from it again, afterwards, with a great eagerness to reestablish one's dignity, as if it were a tombstone to place on the grave of one's shame, and a monument to hide and sign the memory of our weaknesses. Everybody's in the same case. Some folks haven't the courage to say certain things, that's all!
THE STEP-DAUGHTER: All appear to have the courage to do them though. — Luigi Pirandello

You are chosen to be faithful women of God in our day, to stand above pettiness, gossip, selfishness, lewdness, and all other forms of ungodliness. Recognize your divine birthright as daughters of our Heavenly Father. — Howard W. Hunter

My daughter is a freshman in college and my son is - well, our daughter and our son - is a sophomore in college. So they come home on selected weekends, they come home on vacations and they're home in the summer, although they have jobs. — Erika Slezak

Would my head were a head of lettuce. I drove the last car over the Sagamore Bridge before the state police closed it off. The Cape Cod Canal all atempest beneath. No cars coming, no cars going. The bridge cables flapping like rubber bands. You think in certain circumstances a few thousand feet of bridge isn't a thousand miles? The hurricane wiped out Dennis. Horace thanked God for insurance. I saved our little girl. You want me to say, Hurrah! Hurrah! but I can't, I won't, because to save her once isn't to save her, and still she thumps as if the world was something thumpable. As if it wasn't silence on a fundamental level. Yap on, wife, yap on. Thump, daughter, thump. Louder, Orangutan, louder. I can't hear you. — Peter Orner

I hope my daughter knows that in our house we can make messes and have fun and we'll laugh through it. Granted I don't want her to trash the house, but we do make a lot of messes. — Angela Kinsey

It's time to teach our daughters that their ability to be good people depends on their being good people, not on whether or not they're sexually active. — Jessica Valenti

Our quest for safe harbor begins when we acknowledge our need to give up the independence and self-reliance of the orphan heart and humble ourselves willingly to be fathered and mothered by other men and women who have been there before, people who know how to find their way through the storms and the gales of life and who know where safe harbor lies. Safe harbor - the heart and love of the Father, along with all the riches and resources of His Kingdom - is our inheritance when we enter in with a heart of sons and daughters. Whose son are you? Whose daughter are you? Remember - no sonship, no inheritance. — Jack Frost

On our flight back from Arizona where we adopted our daughter three years after our ungreen one-headed son a stewardess ... paused to to adore the little girl my wife was holding. The woman was very attractive and seemed happy and easy with herself - confident enough to say to my wife 'Well congratulations and my don't you look terrific too.' My wife said 'Well we've just adopted her.' And the stewardess said 'How wonderful Congratulations again I was adopted too.' Happily the enthusiastic remark was not lost on our three-year-old boy nor was it lost on him that in Pheonix we had stayed in a close to luxurious resort hotel. He didn't know or care about the dreary heavy rain that fell in Atlanta when he came into our lives - all he knew about adoption at this point really was that it involved a warm whirpool tub cornucopian buffet breakfasts and a fascinating differently private-partsed baby. — Daniel Menaker

You know the hospital shows on television?" this woman asks. "When someone's heart stops and has to be restarted with electric paddles? That's what you and Margaret did for us. Please tell her daughter our hearts have been going ever since. — Gloria Steinem

We must educate our sons to save our daughters — Yvette Cooper

She sighed. "I don't know, Father, how do you get over someone who's held your heart in their hands for so long? And what do you do when they constantly turn your love away, leaving you battered and bruised?" A sob broke free from her throat to pierce the darkness.
His arm stiffened, paralyzed over her shoulder.
Marcy's voice rose, quiet and strong, to counter her daughter's pain. "You run to the arms of the Almighty, Lizzie. 'Because thou hast been my help, therefore in the shadow of thy wings will I rejoice.' That's the only place our hearts are safe, the only place they can heal. — Julie Lessman

You can hardly imagine that I and Lord Bracknell would dream of allowing our only daughter - a girl brought up with the utmost care - to marry into a cloak-room, and form an alliance with a parcel? — Oscar Wilde

Warmth stole into Murdoch's voice at the memory, and Farah's heart clenched at the picture of her Dougan not yet a man, and yet not a boy, regaling a room full of hardened prisoners about the graveyard capers and bog adventures of a ten-year-old girl in the Scottish Highlands. "He described ye so many times, I feel as though any of us would have recognized ye had we seen ye on the streets. He told us of yer kindness, yer innocence, yer gentle ways and boundless curiosity. Ye became something of a patron saint to us all. Our daughter. Our sister. Our... Fairy. Without even knowing it, ye gave us- him- a little bit of sunshine and hope in a world of shadow and pain. — Kerrigan Byrne