Quotes About My Father Died

“When he died, I went about like a ragged crow telling strangers, "My father died, my father died." My indiscretion embarrassed me, but I could not help it. Without my father on his Delhi rooftop, why was I here? Without him there, why should I go back? Without that ache between us, what was I made of?”

— Kiran Desai

“My father died in 1930, but if you told him or anybody almost in that time that you'd be able to sit back in England and watch a cricket game in Australia, they'd have you put in the loony bin.”

— Desmond Llewelyn

“My father died when I was five, but I grew up in a strong family.”

— Philip Levine

“Sadly, my father died before I graduated, so he didn't see any of the success at all.”

— Phyllis Logan

“IN April 1882 my father died; and I was at once whirled out of my land of dreams into a very different sphere.”

— Edward Carpenter

“My father died when I was only five years old, and that was the moment when I learned a cruel lesson that tomorrow, in fact, might not be another day.”

— Kara Swisher

“When my father died in Greece, leaving my mother strapped, a cheque arrived next day from my Greek publishers who'd just bought two of my books for pounds 500.”

— Emma Tennant

“When my father died, my mother was still alive. And I think when your second parent dies, there is that shock: 'Oh man, I'm an orphan.' There's also this relief: It's done; it's finished; it's over.”

— Roz Chast

“I guess I can be surprised I'm alive. I'm taking a little better care of myself than when I was a young person. My father died when he was 63. My mother made it to 74. My grandparents, God, they were dropping like flies.”

— Loudon Wainwright III

“After my father died, we were pretty much wiped out financially as a family, so I decided to give finance a try.”

— Leon Black

“Mom and Dad were married 64 years. And if you wondered what their secret was, you could have asked the local florist - because every day Dad gave Mom a rose, which he put on her bedside table. That's how she found out what happened on the day my father died - she went looking for him because that morning, there was no rose.”

— Mitt Romney

“I grew up in a very open-minded family. My father died when I was very little, so my mother was really, really incredibly busy trying to provide for us.”

— Sonia Braga

“If I'd seen a grown man beating a crippled boy, of course I'd intervene. If my father died and left my mother destitute, it's your instinct to take care of her. So when I started to think about it in those terms, it started to make sense to me.”

— Charlie Hunnam

“My father died. It is still a deep regret to me this day that in choosing acting as my career I was forced to hurt him. He died too early to see I had done the right, the only thing.”

— Conrad Veidt

“The importance of heart health became very real for me when my father died of heart disease seven years ago. Having experienced the loss first hand, I am inspired to do everything I can to break the cycle and prevent families from losing loved ones to this preventable disease.”

— Monica Potter

“At some level it's still hard for me to admit that my father died. I can talk about it and around it, but those two words. 'He died.' What can that possibly mean? That I won't get to hear his voice again?”

— Jennifer Grant

“I was never honest. My father died, and I had never said to him, 'I'm gay.' I knew what I was, but I had to pretend not to be that to avoid the beatings.”

— John Galliano

“Of course, losing my father was traumatic. I was an only child. But from the time my father died, my general theme in life has been to turn adversity into opportunity.”

— Thomas G. Stemberg

“When my father died, I had millions of people supporting me in a very, very difficult time. I have received so much from this country. I realize that we're defined in life not by what we get from this world but by what we have to offer it, and I know that I have a lot to offer this country, and I'm serious about devoting my life to it.”

— Justin Trudeau

“At the age of 62, my father died of cancer - it was much too soon. My mother never remarried or got over it, never even thought of another man.”

— Monique Roffey

“My father's parents were Irish. Only a year before my father died, he and I went back to Ireland for a week to look at the old homestead.”

— John C. Hawkes

“My father died beside trees on iron rails ... He had 77 dollars on him at the time, and we used the money for Thai takeout because, as my friend Julie says about times like this, 'You still have to eat.'”

— Miriam Toews

“When my father died, I did not cry. When my cat died three days later, I cried a lot.”

— Alejandro Jodorowsky

“My father died the year I was elected to Congress: 1987.”

— Nancy Pelosi

“My father died when I was young, and my mother, Ruth, went to work in an office selling theater and movie parties. She put me through private school, Horace Mann, in Riverdale. She sent me to camp so that I would learn to compete. She was a lioness, and I was her cub.”

— Alan Furst

“I was 37 when my father died-and I no longer had any freedom of choice over what I would do with the rest of my life.”

— J. Paul Getty

“I was 19 when my father died from a heart attack. He was a 55-year-old college professor and had led what was by all appearances a risk-free life. But he was overweight, and heart disease runs in our family.”

— Alex Honnold

“When my father died, my mother came back from being Mrs. Birkin to being Judy Campbell. She was a stunning actress. She came out of her shell. She was herself again: this very independent, funny, intellectual lady - and was able to perform again, which was her life before meeting my father squashed it out.”

— Jane Birkin

“My father died when I was young, and after he did, my mother had it tough. Very tough.”

— Cate Blanchett

“My father died when I was nine, but I came from a stable family environment, which I think does contribute to being well-behaved.”

— Robert Winston

“My grandfather lived to be late 90s on one side and on the other side, 70s or something. And my father died young, at 63. But he didn't take very good care of himself.”

— Clint Eastwood

“My father died in '97. But at least he lived until 93, so he saw my success.”

— John Catsimatidis

“In 1966, I bought my parents a carriage clock for their silver wedding anniversary. It was last wound 30 years later, in December 1996, the month my father died.”

— Clive Sinclair

“I barely saw my mother, and the mom I saw was often angry and unhappy. The mother I grew up with is not the mother I know now. It's not the mother she became after my father died, and that's been the greatest prize of my life.”

— Sonia Sotomayor

“I was raised in the Baptist church ... but I didn't really have a real committed experience with Christ until my father died.”

— T.D. Jakes

“I suppose I often think of my writing as quite impersonal. But it turned out, when my father died, writing was exactly what I wanted to do.”

— Zadie Smith

“I've always tried to make the best of what life gave me. When I was a girl, I longed for a kitten. Instead, I got a weasel. Not the pet I wanted by I've done my best to love Snowdrop just the same ... Since my father died, I've been desperate for a place to call home. The humblest cottage would do. Instead, I've inherited a haunted, infested castle in Nowhere, Northumberland. Not the home I wanted, but I'm determined to make it a home.”

— Tessa Dare

“It's amazing how many tears one person can have. One night after my father died, I had cried so much I started to become paranoid I was doing damage to my eyes, so I googled it. I googled "Can a person cry too much?" Apparently, everyone eventually falls asleep and stops crying in order for their bodies to process normal periods of rest. So no, you can't cry too much.”

— Colleen Hoover

“Another thing they taught was that nobody was ridiculous or bad or disgusting. Shortly before my father died, he said to me, You know-you never wrote a story with a villain in it.”

— Kurt Vonnegut

“In stark contrast to two nights ago, when I felt Peeta was a million miles away, I'm struck by his immediacy now. As we settle in, he pulls my head down to use his arm as a pillow; the other rests protectively over me even when he goes to sleep. No one has held me like this in such a long time. Since my father died and I stopped trusting my mother, no one else's arms have made me feel this safe.”

— Suzanne Collins

“I am old enough to be married twice. I am old enough to be bedded without tenderness or consideration. I am old enough to face death in the confinement room and be told that my own mother
my own mother
has commanded them to save the child and not me! I think I am a woman now. I have a babe in arms, and I have been married and widowed and now bethrothed again. I am like a draper's parcel to be sent about like cloth and cut to the pattern that people wish. My mother told me that my father died by his own hand and that we are an unlucky family. I think I am a woman now! I am treated as a woman grown when it suits you all, you can hardly make me a child again.”

— Philippa Gregory

“I was 16 when my father died, and I had a choice to come back and live in his house or I'd stay at the school. But I felt if my father wanted me to go to that school when I was 5, there must have been a reason - and I understood that reason when I was a teenager, because that school became the only place where I was safe.”

— Rula Jebreal

“You know, my father died of cancer when I was a teenager. He had it before it became popular.”

— Goodman Ace

“My father died many years ago, and yet when something special happens to me, I talk to him secretly not really knowing whether he hears, but it makes me feel better to half believe it.”

— Natasha Josefowitz

“When my father died of AIDS, I knew I had to do everything in my power to prevent others from going through what he endured. I support AmFAR which provides funds for cutting edge AIDS research so we can find a vaccine and a cure.”

— Natasha Richardson

“I was very attached to my family when my father died. I was 19. I was about to go live with my father right when he died, so it was very intense.”

— Charlotte Gainsbourg

“My father died shortly after I was twenty-one; and being left well off, and having a taste for travel and adventure, I resigned, for a time, all pursuit of the almighty dollar, and became a desultory wanderer over the face of the earth.”

— Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton

“When my father died, it sounds kind of simple but I just had the desire to step up and pastor the church. It was what I was supposed to do. I just took that step of faith.”

— Joel Osteen

“There's no greater feeling than people coming up to me and going, "Man, my father was dying, and we went to see Rush Hour, and it was the greatest night we had in years together. We sat in that theater and we laughed for two hours without stopping. That was just a great memory that I had before my father died."”

— Brett Ratner

“My father died and left me his blessing and his business. His blessing brought no money into my pocket, and as to his business, it soon deserted me, for I was busy writing poetry, and could not attend to law, and my clients, though they had great respect for my talents, had no faith in a poetical attorney.”

— Washington Irving