Blanche Wiesen Cook Quotes

I am a southerner who grew up with and around guns. I own some still. My father gave me a .22 rifle when I was 9 and a single barrel .410 shotgun when I was 10.

I do hang on to things. I was so happy my father saved his army jacket. I grew up wearing that all through high school.

No book about Soviet sacrifice was as strong as the women's stories I heard as a child.

Sometimes, my kids say to me, 'Ah, you played with Maradona; you played with this, or you played with that.' And they are so proud.

My father took me to see Hank Williams on December 14th, 1952. I was two years and four months of age. And I remember a little cool eddy of hair hitting my cheek, and I remember the smell of his hair oil, and I remember the mingling tonality of the small talk before the show started. Those are my memories.

I knew about boxing, as my dad could fight. He had a successful security firm in Liverpool, and I'd see him come back from a jog before shadow boxing in the back yard. I'd watch and replicate what he was doing, as kids do. It's funny how things turn out.

The last book I read to my mom was 'Barbara Bush: A Memoir' published by mom in 1994. It reflected on their entire life - dad going to China, running the CIA, running for Senate, running for President twice.

I knew Roman Reigns when he used to come into the locker room with his father, holding his father's hand, barely out of diapers. And I don't say that as an ironic statement... I mean it sincerely.

All my family worked for Puma. My mother worked there, and my father was the guy that opened and closed up in the evening. We lived in the neighbouring building - just a couple of steps, and I would be in the Puma factory. All 300 people that worked there knew me; it was my adventure playground. I knew everything, even how to make a shoe sole.

Men with purple hearts carry silver guns and they will kill a man for what his father has done. But what my father did, I don't live it: no, I am not him.

The memoir was a very personal book. I wrote it as a personal journey and search about who my father was and how my family had come together and come apart - sorting all that out, you know, issues of personal identity.

My earliest memories of my father are of seeing him work at his desk and realizing that he was happy. I did not know it then, but that was one of the most precious gifts a father can give his child.

I came to America when I was seven and a half in 91. I think the first full length book in English that I read was Return to Oz when I was nine years old.

Well, I didn't feel that I could do justice to this story of my parents and their generation, and all that they did to make it possible for me to be who I am, if I sort of just put it at the beginning of a book about my last eight years in foreign policy.

My grandfather would have loved to have met you," he told her huskily. "He would have called you 'She Moves Trees Out of His Path.' " She looked lost, but his da laughed. He'd known the old man, too. "He called me 'He Who Must Run into Trees,'" Charles explained, and in a spirit of honesty, a need for his mate to know who he was, he continued, "or sometimes 'Running Eagle.' " " 'Running Eagle'?" Anna puzzled it over, frowning at him. "What's wrong with that?" "Too stupid to fly," murmured his father with a little smile.

we all carry the Houses of our Youth inside, and our Parents, too, grown small enough to fit within our Hearts.

I was writing - at least beginning to write Boston Boy and there were a lot of holes in my so-called research. I didn't know the towns my mother and father came from in Russia. I didn't know the name of the clothing store I went to work for when I was 11 years old. I didn't know a lot of things. So I called for my FBI files, not expecting to have that stuff there, but I wanted to know what they had on me.But they did have the towns my mother and father lived in in Russia. They had the grocery store I worked in when I was 11 years old.

Oddly enough, my mother was born in Southampton. I have roots in Southampton, Bridgehampton, Sag Harbor. My grandfather, her father, Stefano Rullo, when he came from Naples, he went to Pennsylvania and worked coal mines.

Bedtime stories were definitely a big part of my life because I was just so excited my father was talking to me.

When the sins of our fathers visit us We do not have to play host. We can banish them with forgiveness As God, in his His Largeness and Laws.

My father gave me free run of his library. When I think of my boyhood, I think in terms of the books I read.

He was my father. I own half his genes, and all of his history. Believe this: the mistakes are part of the story. I am born of a man who believed he could tell nothing but the truth, while he set down for all time the Poisonwood Bible.

Sometimes you don't know if your memory is because you really experienced it or because you look at your old pictures. I have a nice picture of myself held up by my grandfather and my father standing next to me. We all have the same name - we're all called Anton Corbijn. That's something I cherish.

My father's book is about is about a number of things, but about Houdini's rage to not be a failure like his father, and it's also about converting X-rated material, namely bondage, into family friendly safe fare, which is what he did. It's also about death and resurrection, and rising to live again another day when everyone thinks you're dead.

If I sat back and decided to sell the product of my father and my grandfather's work, like a leech, you know I wouldn't be able to look at myself in the mirror... I want to be able to look at my father in 10 years' time and say, 'I'm proud of you, and you should be proud of me.'