12 Literary Quotes About Fathers

Writers Write is a resource for writers. In this post, we share our top 12 literary quotes about fathers.

I hope some of these quotes inspire you to create memorable fathers in the books you write.

12 Literary Quotes About Fathers

1. It was times like these when I thought my father, who hated guns and had never been to any wars, was the bravest man who ever lived.  ~Harper Lee, To Kill A Mockingbird
2. All fathers are invisible in daytime; daytime is ruled by mothers and fathers come out at night. Darkness brings home fathers, with their real, unspeakable power. There is more to fathers than meets the eye. ~Margaret Atwood, Cat’s Eye
3. I believe that what we become depends on what our fathers teach us at odd moments, when they aren’t trying to teach us. We are formed by little scraps of wisdom. ~Umberto Eco, Foucault’s Pendulum
4. Sometimes I think my papa is an accordion. When he looks at me and smiles and breathes, I hear the notes. ~Markus Zusak, The Book Thief
5. He breathed in [my mother’s] hair, the sweet-smelling thickness of it. My father usually agreed with her requests, because stamped in his two-footed stance and jaw was the word Provider, and he loved her the way a bird-watcher’s heart leaps when he hears the call of the roseate spoonbill, a fluffy pink wader, calling its lilting coo-coo from the mangroves. Check, says the bird-watcher. Sure, said my father, tapping a handful of mail against her back. ~Aimee Bender, The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake
6. Few sons are like their fathers – many are worse, few better. ~Homer, Odyssey 2
7. Perhaps that is what it means to be a father – to teach your child to live without you. ~Nicole Krauss, The History of Love
8. Sherman made the terrible discovery that men make about their fathers sooner or later… that the man before him was not an ageing father but a boy, a boy much like himself, a boy who grew up and had a child of his own and, as best he could, out of a sense of duty and, perhaps love, adopted a role called Being a Father so that his child would have something mythical and infinitely important: a Protector, who would keep a lid on all the chaotic and catastrophic possibilities of life. ~Tom Wolfe, The Bonfire of the Vanities
9. Never having been in love, this is going to be a real trick. I think of my parents. The way my father never failed to bring her gifts from the woods. The way my mother’s face would light up at the sound of his boots at the door. The way she almost stopped living when he died. ~Suzanne Collins, The Hunger Games
10. A man knows when he is growing old because he begins to look like his father. ~Gabriel Garcia Marquez
11. The father is always a Republican toward his son, and his mother’s always a democrat. ~Robert Frost
12. At sixteen, you still think you can escape from your father. You aren’t listening to his voice speaking through your mouth, you don’t see how your gestures already mirror his; you don’t see him in the way you hold your body, in the way you sign your name. You don’t hear his whisper in your blood. ~Salman Rushdie, East, West: Stories

 compiled by Amanda Patterson

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2. The 15 Most Memorable Mothers in Literature
3. 10 Elementary Tips For Writers From Sherlock Holmes
4. The Daily Word Counts of 39 Famous Authors

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