Mordecai Richler Quotes

You can't tell a 6-year-old your sister is going to die.

My parents were extremely reluctant. When my father was clearly dying, my mother refused to acknowledge it.

If I did not have for him the warm affection a son feels toward a less austere and preoccupied father, I at least had an immense respect for him, and a great admiration.

I knew that my father was going to die of heart disease, and I was trying to make a heart for him.

I try not to spend too much time with regret, although I wish I'd had more hang time with my dad.

I think in any father-son relationship, there's going to be times you say, 'Well, the apple didn't fall far from the tree.'

My dad was diagnosed with cancer, so we ended up burying him a year to the day that he was diagnosed.

I was 28 when my father died, and I was an only child.

I don't think my father was a bad man, all in all.

My father died prematurely at the age of 52 when I was 24, and it is a recurring regret that he never lived to see me succeed beyond university and drama.

When my lover Hubert Sorin was dying of AIDS, he was always trying to fix me up - posthumously, as it were - with the cute busboy at the hotel.

I don't think my father was my mentor.

My dad passed away when I was 10.

My mother's death was very painful as it occurred over a period of a week. Watching her die was the hardest thing my dad ever went through.

The loss of my father will always sting. But now, everything that I do is in honor of him and celebrates his life.

I think losing my father was OK in the sense that it's cool for me not to have a father; it's normal. I'm supposed to bury my father. But what I didn't realize was that my father was my best friend, and that still gets me... that still irritates me a lot.

You wanted to kill your father in order to be your father yourself. Now you are your father, but a dead father.

My grandmother made dying her life's work.

You can't love your mother or father if you don't also have the capacity to grieve their deaths and, perhaps even more so, grieve parts of their lives.

My grandmother's brain was dead, but her heart was still beating. It was the first time we ever had a democrat in the family.

My family joins me in sharing the difficult news that Gerald Ford, our beloved husband, father, grandfather and great grandfather has passed away at 93 years of age. His life was filled with love of God, his family and his country.

I was an only child growing up, and my father passed away when I was twelve, so for most of my life, it was just me and my momma. We were really, really close. Learning to live in the world without her has been incredibly hard. At first, it didn't make any sense - how to do it, to live without her - but you slowly get somewhat used to it.

We'll bury our mothers and fathers - shuttling our children off for sleepovers, jumping on red-eyes, telling eachother stories that hurt to hear, about gasping, agonal breaths, hospice nurses, scars and bruises and scabs, and how skin papers shortly after a person passes. We will nod in agreement that it is as much an honor to witness a person leave this world as it is to watch a person come into it.

Listen, children: Your father is dead. From his old coats I'll make you little jackets; I'll make you little trousers From his old pants. There'll be in his pockets Things he used to put there, Keys and pennies Covered with tobacco; Dan shall have the pennies To save in his bank; Anne shall have the keys To make a pretty noise with. Life must go on, Though good men die; Anne, eat your breakfast; Dan, take your medicine; Life must go on; I forget just why.

My son is the reason why I write music. He's the reason why everything is different for me. Because when he came into the picture, my priorities changed. I can risk possibly being incarcerated because the only person pays for it is me. I know that if I'm not physically available to take care of him, nobody else will. I want to have the relationship with him that me and my father never had.