Jeffrey Archer Quotes

When you're an only child, you get very used to pleasing the adults around you.

And a great misunderstanding is that children think their parents are grown-up, and parents feel obliged to act as if they were.

I remember when I was a kid, with the acting thing, I resented it because, you know, you don't want to do what your parents want you to do.

The fundamental defect of fathers, in our competitive society, is that they want their children to be a credit to them.

My parents are not shy, clearly publicly and otherwise, in expressing their hopes that they will soon be grandparents.

That's what children are for—that their parents may not be bored.

It's important to see your parents as individuals. As a son or as a daughter you don't stop and think that your parents might have their own expectations, dreams or disappointments.

What had I expected of the first child? Everything. Rocket scientist. Neurosurgeon. Designated hitter. We talked wisely at cocktail parties about the sad mistake our mothers had made in pinning all their hopes and dreams on us. We were full of it.

I think a lot of parents live their lives through the kids. Because they didn't make it [achieve something], they want their kids to make it. It puts a lot of undue pressure on the kids.

No matter how many Christmas presents you give your child, there's always that terrible moment when he's opened the very last one. That's when he expects you to say, 'Oh yes, I almost forgot,' and take him out and show him the pony.

Children need parents who will let them grow up to be themselves, but parents often have personal agendas they try to impose on their children.

My parents were not pushy or anything like that. I think my mom was still expecting me to be an astronaut, but now she is very happy that I'm not doing that.

Your folks are god, you love them and you want to make them happy but you still want to make up your own rules.

Sometimes maybe children also fulfill their parents' secrets desire.

The Ice Nation is a pretty brutal place. They breed war heroes. The relationship between mother and child, in that world, is a little bit different than it is in our own society. But, no one really likes being a disappointment to their parents and their family.

A low self-love in the parent desires that his child should repeat his character and fortune.

I got a liberal arts education just because I felt like I should to keep my parents happy, but it was for them. If it was up to me, I would've just moved to New York.

A lot of mothers will do anything for their children, except let them be themselves.

Nothing has a stronger influence psychologically on their environment and especially on their children than the unlived life of the parent.

Many people suffer all their lives from this oppressive feeling of guilt, the sense of not having lived up to their parents' expectations. This feeling is stronger than any intellectual insight they might have, that it is not a child's task or duty to satisfy his parents needs. No argument can overcome these guilt feelings, for they have their beginnings in life's earliest periods, and from that they derive their intensity and obduracy.

Parents fear the destruction of natural affection in their children. What is this natural principle so liable to decay? Habit is a second nature, which destroys the first. Why is not custom nature? I suspect that this nature itself is but a first custom, as custom is a second nature.

Parents don't know their children at all. No one knows anyone, in fact.

Parents try the best they can. They want the best for you. But a lot of their stuff is just their own. If you can pull yourself away from it and not always feel like they're attacking you, then it's easier to deal with.

She hated being a nobody and like all children, adopted or not, I have had to live out some of her unlived life. We do that for our parents - we don't really have any choice.

Badgered, snubbed and scolded on the one hand; petted, flattered and indulged on the other-it is astonishing how many children work their way up to an honest manhood in spite of parents and friends. Human nature has an element of great toughness in it.