209 Quotes About Fathers-and-sons

Basketball allowed me to revere my father without him knowing what I was up to. I took up basketball as a form of homage and mimicry.

While she was exchanging the simplest sentences with him, even while she was jesting with him, she was conscious of a faint spasm of dread. So people on a steamer at sea talk and laugh carelessly, for all the world as though they were on dry land; but let only the slightest hitch occur, let the least sign be seen of anything out of the common, and at once on every face there comes out an expression of peculiar alarm, betraying the constant consciousness of constant danger.

Boys do not long for fathers who will usher them through the gauntlet of psychological disconnect. They long for fathers who have themselves survived intact. Boys do not ache for their father's masculinity. They ache for their fathers' hearts.

Even if all I did was stay away... it's still the best thing I ever did in my life.

You may not want to be my son, but I cannot help but be your father.

We are born with our father's names. We are not responsible for their failures. We are responsible for what they made us believe in. That is our only obligation. And it is even then a choice which we may sometimes be wise to ignore.

Do you remember when Henry died? Do you remember how it felt when we saw Dad cry for the first time? We were six. We held his hand as Henry's casket was lowered into the ground. And Dad told us, "The death of a man is not the death of his dream." Do you remember that?

Only you don’t change, Omar. You’re still a wreck. Look at your clothes, your hair…the hour you arrive at home. Now you have no father, you should look for a job and stop with this idle lunacy. Your father couldn’t bear looking at you like this. He couldn’t bear watching your life thrown away.

My father greeted me with his usual air of mild regret.