A Real Dad Quotes

“And I feel like a real Dad when I read to her at night. She won't sleep without one story, at least.”

— Steven Herrick

“No nerve, hey? Not half a man! ... Buster Jack, why don't you finish game? Make up for your low-down tricks. At the last try to be worthy of your dad. In his day he was a real man ... Let him have the consolation that you faced Hell-Bent Wade an' died in your boots!”

— Zane Grey

“Most days I go home crying
and my dad tells me
welcome to the real world.”

— Samantha Schutz

“I still say Kellyanne could do with some real-live mates," went on my dad, as if he was talking to someone inside his beer.
Mum had stomped off into the kitchen. "Maybe they are real!" she shouted back at him after rattling a few plates together. "Ever thought about that, ye of little bloody imagination?”

— Ben Rice

“Do you think you can cause something to happen just from wanting it so much?' she asked. 'I don't get what you mean. Does this have to do with your dad?' asked Frannie. 'Not really. I'm talking about loneliness.' Frannie turned around and considered her answer. For awhile she seemed to be in a wilderness of her own. 'Do you mean that you imagined that Issy was your friend?' 'Yes, so completely that it was real.' 'Oh, that can happen. I believe that totally. Loneliness is powerful.”

— Delia Ephron

“Still, I couldn't get over Dad calling those farmers. People might think helping is hard, but really that's the easy part; just look how good it makes people feel. Look how happy all those Red Bend ladies were about chipping in. It's the asking that's so painful. It takes real courage, real strength, to say you're not strong enough to do it alone. Mom must really be hurting for Dad to be so brave.”

— Catherine Gilbert Murdock

“My real mom died when I was born-hemorrhaged to death while giving birth to
me, which has never been one of my favorite memories-and Dad married Denise before I'd turned a year. Without even asking my opinion on the
matter. Denise and I never really clicked.”

— Darynda Jones

“I felt a springing in my chest. Could Dad and I be close? Like a real father and son?”

— Jandy Nelson

“I never really saw my dad as entertained as when he was just completely blown away by somebody on the television screen or at the movies. I think that's the real reason that I went into acting.”

— Kim Basinger

“Out of all my friends, I believe I'm the only kid whose dad made us work to cut rebars; we laid bricks in construction sites and did other real work every summer for minimum wage. Our dad said that it's important in the future that when we tell people to dig a hole, that you personally know how long it will take to dig that hole.”

— Eric Trump

“Dad bought me a toy drum one Christmas, and I eventually destroyed it. I wanted a real drum and he bought me a snare drum. Dad continued to buy me one drum after the other.”

— Keith Thibodeaux

“Here's the sick, twisted thing: part of me thinks i deserve this. that maybe if i wasn't such an asshole, isaac would have been real. if i wasn't such a lame excuse for a person, something right might happen to me. it's not fair, because i didn't ask for dad to leave, and i didn't ask to be depressed, and i didn't ask for us to have no money, and i didn't ask to want to fuck boys, and i didn't ask to be so stupid, and i didn't ask to have no real friends, and i didn't ask to have half the shit that comes out of my mouth come out of my mouth. all i wanted was one fucking break, one idiotic good thing, and that was clearly too much to ask for, too much to want.”

— David Levithan

“Wes held my hand in front of Dad, who played it real easy, like I had boys around all the time. JoAnn said I was lucky, and she should know. Her father specialized in fear, being a life insurance salesman, and could bring a boy to his knees.”

— Joan Bauer

“I'll tell you if you tell me," I say, washing my hands of maturity. I'm tired of the double standard-she keeps secrets, but I'm not allowed. Also, I'm tired, period. I need sleep. Which means I need answers.
"What do you mean? Tell you what?"
"I'll tell you what we were really doing out there. After you tell me who my real parents are." There, I opened it. A chunky can of wiggling worms.
She laughs, just like I expect her to. "Are you serious?"
I nod. "I know I'm adopted. I want to know how. Why. When."
She laughs again, but there's something false in it, as if it wasn't her first reaction. "So that's what this is about? You're rebelling because you think you're adopted? Why on earth would you think that?"
I fold my hands in front of me on the table. "Look at me. We both know I'm different. I don't look like you or Dad."
"That's not true. You have my chin and mouth. And there's no disinheriting the McIntosh nose.”

— Anna Banks

“He was like a real dad, you know. We used to sit down with guitars and mess around.”

— Julian Lennon

“My dad was very much a John Wayne kind of guy, but he was also a great guy, great sense of humor, a real dedicated dad. I don't think he ever missed a hockey game I was in.”

— Denis Leary

“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.”

— Dan Stevens

“I went and took golf lessons so Dad would let me play with him. I was just terrible ... but I was able to have a wonderful time just walking around with Dad. I can see the real pleasure of that game.”

— David Hyde Pierce

“The real reason we ended up getting into that type of music was our dad worked for an oil company so we spent a year overseas when we were young kids. Because of that, it was all Spanish TV and radio so we ended up having these '50s and '60s tapes, tapes of that music.”

— Zac Hanson

“My dad didn't graduate from high school, ended up being a printing salesman, probably never made more than $8,000 a year. My mom sold real estate and did it part time.”

— Al Franken

“It's interesting, because I named my first album after my dad because I wanted to find him. My second album was named after my mom because I felt like I learned all my creative talents I learned from her. All the survival stuff, too. And then the next album is 'Maya,' which is not my real name. It's fake.”

— M.I.A.

“I have a real no-nonsense dad who taught me how to be resilient at a very young age.”

— Nicole Ari Parker

“My dad was a real man's man, and so were my brothers, in a small town where hockey is king. It's a masculine culture. It made me really attentive to what it meant to be a guy.”

— Lynn Coady

“We had a few non-fiction books at home, but my dad was of the opinion that fiction was a complete and utter waste of time because it wasn't real - so what was the point of reading it?”

— Malorie Blackman

“Whatever love meant there was some version of it that I felt for Winter. And it didn't matter if he felt that for me or not or if it was real love or just my sadness about my dad that had turned into longing. Love, that elusive leading lady, plays too many parts to be typecast.”

— Francesca Lia Block

“I'm real good with math, with numbers, like my dad was. I'm pretty much dialed in.”

— Hulk Hogan

“I lost my dad back in the fall, and my dad said something to me a long time ago. He said, 'Are you happy with who you are now?' because we just had a real serious talk. And I said, 'Yeah.' He said, 'Then you can't regret what got you to where you are. So whatever you do and whatever mistakes you make, learn from them and grow. And just always treat people with kindness,' which I've tried to do.”

— Dennis Haskins

“Growing up working with my dad, I really had no interest in doing the actual work, so I was always like drawing on the wood, doing stuff like that. It just has a real hands-on approach.”

— Eddie Martinez

“When I was very young my mother sang to me at bedtime and my dad would often play the banjo or fiddle in the evening. I knew music was important and central to everything, most particularly it had a powerful healing value and created a sense of peace and security. This stood out to me as I always felt the world was precarious and dangerous, and music supplied those moments of real peace and safety.”

— Rory Block

“Growing up, I was lucky that my dad was never out of work. I was very fortunate in one way: that I never experienced real hardship, because my dad is this real dynamo. He was always working, so I had a sense of the ups and downs and endless disappointments, but at the same time I was never worried that we couldn't eat or pay the bills.”

— Mary Harron

“I really became a hardcore Batman fan when I was eight years old. What was clear to me, the reason I liked him better than Superman or Spider-Man or the Hulk or whoever, was the fact that he was human, and I could identify with him, and I really believed in that character strongly. In my heart of hearts, when I was eight years old, I believed that if I studied real hard, and worked out real hard, and if my dad bought me a cool car, I could be this guy.”

— Michael Uslan

“My dad was an alcoholic and my mother ... we didn't have any money and I grew up really poor. I watched them spend all of their money on cartons of cigarettes and stuff like that and I didn't understand how if we were broke and we couldn't afford Christmas presents, why could you smoke all of those cigarettes? It's not like they are making you better ... they are killing you. It seemed real idiotic to me.”

— CM Punk

“I think that my strong determination for justice comes from the very strong, dynamic personality of my father ... I have rarely ever met a person more fearless and courageous than my father ... The thing that I admire most about my dad is his genuine Christian character. He is a man of real integrity, deeply committed to moral and ethical principles. He is conscientious in all of his undertakings ... If I had a problem I could always call Daddy.”

— Martin Luther King, Jr.

“If your dad died before you were born, yeah, it hurts-but it's not like you had a connection with something that was real. Not to say it's any better- but to have that connection and then have it ripped away was, like, the worst. My dad was such a good dad that when he left, he left a huge scar. He was my superhero.”

— Jay-Z

“I've got three kids. I worry about them but the gospel freed me and freed my wife. We are not trying to make our kids think that we're super spiritual or we've got it all together. They see mom and dad being real people. What they hear dad talking about at home is not different from what they see from dad [at church]. That won't guarantee that they'll avoid the whole PK, MK thing. But we are hopefully not contributing to what normally produces that crisis, which is pretending.”

— Tullian Tchividjian

“I've never protected the president [in real life], but I have been a new dad, and I can tell you that being a new dad is pretty terrifying. I'm pretty sure that something about the president makes the stakes a little higher, but to me as a new father, nothing is more important or scary than protecting a daughter.”

— Channing Tatum

“I never take it as any real pressure. It's like my son. I only gave him one lesson. When I went to give him the second one he said, 'Oh, I can do that dad.' I said, 'Now you're on your own.'”

— Ringo Starr