Joe Orton Quotes

It is easier for a father to have children than for children to have a real father.

No man is responsible for his father. That was entirely his mother's affair.

My eldest son, Jack, grew up with me as a 'part-time' dad.

If you bungle raising your children, I don't think whatever else you do matters very much.

I think I'm a good dad. It's hard. Ultimately, it's our kids that have the final word. So we'll have to ask them.

People are concerned, here again, about life, and haven't given a whole lot of attention to how you make fathers responsible for the lives they bring into the world.

If I do something for my kids, I get a medal, because most fathers don't.

If you bungle raising your children, nothing else matters in life.

if we are honest with ourselves, we’ll admit that what too many fathers also are is missing – missing from too many lives and too many homes. They have abandoned their responsibilities, acting like boys instead of men. And the foundations of our families are weaker because of it.

My youngest is 26, and so I hardly remember life not being a father, but my wife and I were hands on-parents.

So much of my work is about children and/or parenting; it's something I'm drawn to without being able to completely articulate why.

The mother may be doing ninety percent of the disciplining, but the father still must have a full-time acceptance of all the children. He never must say, "Get these kids out of here; I'm trying to watch TV." If he ever does start saying this, he is liable to see one of his kids on the six o'clock news.

Don't be a pal to your son. Be his father. What child needs a 40-year-old for a friend?

It doesn't make any difference how much money a father earns, his name is always Dad-Can-I.... Like all other children, my five have one great talent: they are gifted beggars. Not one of them ever ran into the room, looked up at me, and said, "I'm really happy that you're my father, and as a tangible token of my appreciation, here's a dollar.

Fathers and mothers are too absorbed in business and housekeeping to study their children, and cherish that sweet and natural confidence which is a child's surest safeguard, and a parent's subtlest power.

The message was that... fathers can go ahead and have children, but they don't have to raise the children.

Sherman made the terrible discovery that men make about their fathers sooner or later... that the man before him was not an aging father but a boy, a boy much like himself, a boy who grew up and had a child of his own and, as best he could, out of a sense of duty and, perhaps love, adopted a role called Being a Father so that his child would have something mythical and infinitely important: a Protector, who would keep a lid on all the chaotic and catastrophic possibilities of life. ~Tom Wolfe

Your disrespect for me is apparent. You never respected me when I think about it and you never liked me. But I’m the parent and you’re the child and it is not your job to love me the way I love you. My love for you is unconditional and no matter what you decide in your life I will love you. Doesn’t mean I have to like it, but I will always love you. Love, Dad

I've learned that the worst thing a parent can do is ignore their children

When a child enters the world through you, it alters everything on a psychic, psychological and purely practical level.

We know that there are children out there whose parents do not take the kind of interest in their upbringing and in their existence that we would wish, but I don't think censorship is ever the solution to any problem, be it societal or be it the kind of information or ideas that you have access to.

If fathers aren't growing up, I would challenge them to want to be a father that is present in the home, so that their kids have that identity.

The happiest and holiest children in the world are the children whose fathers succeed in winning both their tender affection and their reverential and loving fear. And they are the children who will come to understand most easily the mystery of the fatherhood of God.

Unconditional love is what a child should expect from a parent even though it rarely works out that way.

Kids and violent TV, violent TV and violence, violence and kids. The only people missing from this discussion are the parents. Where are we? Gone. Abdicated.