Padgett Powell Quotes

I have three kids, and I'm a coach for a lot of their sports, so I'm around them a lot, but I see friends of mine with older kids and they don't really interact so much, other than giving them a place to live.

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.

We mothers of grown-up daughters tend to view them with a mixture of love, exasperation, irritation and awe.

The fact my relationship with my son is so good makes me forgiving of my father and also appreciative.

We're good at taking care of little kids, and spend a lot of energy teaching them things like how to read. But when kids get as tall as their parents and can look them in the eyes, we tend to drop the ball - at a time they most need a loving consistent community of adults, be it parents, aunts, uncles, or others.

I hate Christmas, really. I don't really give presents away or expect any.

I once bought my kids a set of batteries for Christmas with a note on it saying, toys not included.

The great thing about baseball is when you're done, you'll only tell your grandchildren the good things. If they ask me about 1989, I'll tell them I had amnesia.

To all those mothers and fathers who are struggling with teen-agers, I say, just be patient: even though it looks like you can't do anything right for a number of years, parents become popular again when kids reach 20.

My parents still treat Christmas like I'm thirteen years old.

I think that if you become a parent, you stop being a child, and your position in relation to your parents changes.

I was probably a terrible husband, but I pride myself on being a good dad.

All my books explore fatherhood. I look at what it means to have a big father figure at the centre: sometimes they're a good father, sometimes bad.

We've had bad luck with our kids - they've all grown up.

'Good Luck Charlie' is different from all the other Disney Channel shows because it's so relatable. Everything that happens on the show can happen to you and your family.

At this stage I am not involved with young adults as closely as many other writers. My children are grown up and my grandchildren are still quite young.

Sometimes, because of my success, I am afraid that I was not a good father. With the first two I was too strong, and with the other three I was too weak.

I'm waiting for the day when my children cease to find my domestic propriety reassuring and actually find it annoying.

My kids seem to be more mature and older than I am now somehow. They've gotten ahead of me somehow. But they're very patient with me.

My father is not that comfortable with children, but he's a terrific father for an adult.

I'm in an age bracket now where I can play the father of an adult daughter whose going through her life issues, and she'll come to me for advice while I'm wearing my Christmas sweater and swirling a cup of hot cocoa.

'Abel' is about the father I don't want to be and the boy I used to be.

The only thing I liked about Christmas as a kid was the gifts; otherwise, it just seemed like a stressful time.

It gets to you as a father when your kids don't react to you in the way you imagine.

I think probably everyone can relate to wanting to believe that your parents are one thing, and having to come to the realization that they might not be.