2. "'Why do men like me want sons?' he wondered. 'It must be because they hope in their poor beaten souls that these new men, who are their blood, will do the things they were not strong enough nor wise enough nor brave enough to do. It is rather like another chance at life; like a new bag of coins at a table of luck after your fortune is gone.'" —John Steinbeck, Cup of Gold
3. "A father is the one friend upon whom we can always rely. In the hour of need, when all else fails, we remember him upon whose knees we sat when children, and who soothed our sorrows; and even though he may be unable to assist us, his mere presence serves to comfort and strengthen us." —Émile Gaboriau, File No. 113
5. "There's something like a line of gold thread running through a man's words when he talks to his daughter, and gradually over the years it gets to be long enough for you to pick up in your hands and weave into a cloth that feels like love itself." —John Gregory Brown, Decorations in a Ruined Cemetery
6. "There's no shame in fear, my father told me, what matters is how we face it." —George R. R. Martin, A Clash of Kings
7. "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
9. "Your father, Jo. He never loses patience, never doubts or complains, but always hopes, and works and waits so cheerfully that one is ashamed to do otherwise before him." —Louisa May Alcott, Little Women
10. "He promised us that everything would be okay. I was a child, but I knew that everything would not be okay. That did not make my father a liar. It made him my father." —Jonathan Safran Foer, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close
11. "To be the father of growing daughters is to understand something of what Yeats evokes with his imperishable phrase 'terrible beauty.' Nothing can make one so happily exhilarated or so frightened: it's a solid lesson in the limitations of self to realize that your heart is running around inside someone else's body." ―Christopher Hitchens, Hitch-22: A Memoir
13. "A few days after we came home from the hospital, I sent a letter to a friend, including a photo of my son and some first impressions of fatherhood. He responded, simply, 'Everything is possible again.' It was the perfect thing to write because that was exactly how it felt." ―Jonathan Safran Foer, Eating Animals
14. "In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I've been turning over in my mind ever since. 'Whenever you feel like criticizing any one,' he told me, 'just remember that all the people in this world haven't had the advantages that you've had.'" —F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby
16. "A father acts on behalf of his children by working, providing, intervening, struggling, and suffering for them. In so doing, he really stands in their place. He is not an isolated individual, but incorporates the selves of several people in his own self." —Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Ethics
17. "I'd love to know how Dad saw me when I was 6. I'd love to know a hundred things. When a parent dies, a filing cabinet full of all the fascinating stuff also ceases to exist. I never imagined how hungry I'd be one day to look inside it." ―David Mitchell, The Bone Clocks