Quote

Sometimes the father feels pushed out because of the connection between the mother and the child.

That always seemed to be the most critical test that a child was confronted with - loss of parents, loss of direction, loss of love. Can you live without a mother and a father?

Those who have never had a father can at any rate never know the sweets of losing one. To most men the death of his father is a new lease of life.

I found out when I was 18 that Dad had left my mother and the family before he realised he was ill and then died. When I asked Mum about it, she just sort of shrugged it off and said she'd thought I knew about it all along. Of course I hadn't, though I'm sure she must have been desperately unhappy at the time.

To grow up with the loss of your mother is a scar that never goes away.

A father may turn his back on his child, brothers and sisters may become inveterate enemies, husbands may desert their wives, wives their husbands. But a mother's love endures through all.

I had to go on without my mother, even though I was suffering terribly, grieving her.

We live in grief for having left the womb, for having left the teat, then school, then home. In my case, it was leaving marriages, and the death of my wife.

Now that I'm a parent, I understand why my father was in a bad mood a lot.

When a father climbs a dangerous mountain and dies, we mourn. When a mother does, we question her judgment. How could she?