“We all started snowboarding in the beginning as a family just to be closer together, go on trips. It was our soccer, but instead of Dad yelling at me from the sideline he is there riding with me and hitting the jumps even before I am hitting them.”
Fatherhood does not come with a manual, which is probably why so many people have tried to write about it. These quotes cover the pride, worry, humor, and fierce love that come with being a dad — or having one who shaped who you became.
“My father was so good-natured and had such a happy disposition. I've always confused him with Jimmy Stewart. So, think Jimmy Stewart. That's my dad.”
“We all started snowboarding in the beginning as a family just to be closer together, go on trips. It was our soccer, but instead of Dad yelling at me from the sideline he is there riding with me and hitting the jumps even before I am hitting them.”
“The time not to become a father is eighteen years before a war.”
“My dad was a Marine. He was one of the Montford Point Marines. Those are the equivalent of the Tuskegee Airmen for Marines. He's a tough, tough guy. When I was 15 we had a fight, and I didn't speak to him for 10 years.”
“My dad had emphysema and both of my parents had chronic bronchitis and ended up with cancers - all smoking related.”
“My dad was an absentee dad, so it was always important to me that I was part of my daughter's life, and she deserved two parents, which is part of the rationale behind us staying married for 30 years.”
“Losing my parents was the most crushing thing that ever happened to me. I lost my dad when I was 26, and it changed my life entirely.”
“I've never tried to find my real parents. I'm very grateful to my mum and dad for adopting me - they're completely incredible people. It was my dad who encouraged me to question everything, to forge my own path, to think, to read. I always felt it was my right to question everything.”
“I've never been a hands-on dad. I'm not ashamed to admit it, but you can't run a restaurant and be home for tea at 4:30 and bath and change nappies.”
“I've become a less brave traveller since I became a dad, but in the past I was more foolhardy than brave.”
“From time to time, I'll look back through the personal journals I've scribbled in throughout my life, the keepers of my raw thoughts and emotions. The words poured forth after my dad died, when I went through a divorce, and after I was diagnosed with breast cancer. There are so many what-ifs scribbled on those pages.”
“I spent a lot of time on farms when I was young. My uncle and my dad owned a big farm.”
“I'd like to play Matt Damon's daddy. He's a wonderful actor, I really admire him, and I'd like to play his dad one day.”
“I've always wanted to be a dad.”
“My dad said, 'The thing that I was told that was really helpful was that I mustn't be afraid of the things I was afraid of when I was five years old'. The shock of his childhood had put him in this defensive crouch against the world, and he needed to know that he had a nice wife and kids and it wasn't the same any more.”
“My dad had been born in Mexico and his family had to leave during the Mexican revolution.”