Lillian Hellman Quotes

The first half of our lives are ruined by our parents and the second half by our children.

Do not try to live your children's lives out of your own frustrations.

I was so determined not to pass on to my children what I perceived to be the faults of my upbringing.

You always want to break away from your parents, and you always think, 'I'm never going to be like that guy.' What I've discovered is you kind of wind up becoming your parents, which is also a cliche in itself. My father, despite the fact that he's been dead for over 25 years, he's been a huge influence on me.

When I was a boy I used to do what my father wanted. Now I have to do what my boy wants. My problem is: When am I going to do what I want?

As I get older and I get a few more years experience I become more like Dad, you know, King Lear.

It absolutely helped - to write the father in both 'Juicy' and 'Beasts,' I had to see the whole story from his point of view. All of a sudden I understood more of what my own father must be going through - the fear, the frustration, the anger... the hope that he'll leave a legacy.

I resemble the father I once hated.

Children begin by loving their parents; after a time they judge them; rarely, if ever, do they forgive them.

Everything you say in a family carries meaning from all that was said before. So with friends, there is less likelihood of a few words triggering associations from childhood, where our deepest emotions often are rooted.

My daughter is in more competition with me. I never wanted to be bigger than my mother or to challenge her.

I'm coming to that realization that I'm going to be seen as a mom to someone, and it makes you think about your own parents. You know, who were they?

I've never really turned to my dad for anything, I think out of fear of the label of nepotism.

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.

He doesn't know how to be warmer. I can't blame him. My dad had to deal with more stuff than I ever did.

People forget how the same children brought up with affection, effort, and love are the ones who later kick their parents.

My father is the reason I am the way I am today. He's why I acted up and he's why I prayed to be the opposite of him. We made up before he died but I vowed to never raise my kids like how he raised me.

My father wasn't too crazy about me. I loved him anyway. One of the things I regretted for a long time was that he died before he could see that he would be proud of me. I was actually more what he wished for than he thought.

My dad was a terrible father. Dreadful. But he had a very difficult childhood. He was fostered - he never knew who his father was. So he had a very different attitude to family and kids. I don't have any issues. I'm not suffering some secret angst.

I only get angry at my brothers and at my father.

This part of being a man, changing the way we parent, happens only when we want it to. It changes because we are determined for it to change; and the motive for changing often comes out of wanting to be the kind of parent we didn't have.

Somewhere, sometime I'd stopped expecting my father to father.

My father was a food lover and a deadbeat dad, and maybe a connection between good food and bad dads was forged early, in the deepest folds of my subconscious, where we make so many decisions about our parents.

My mom took all of my behavior personally. Everything I did, she thought it was an act of rebellion against her. But it was just me being me.

I know what it's like to have someone coming home who looks at you not in the way they used to in the old days, and I've seen my own face contorted with sadness and rage in the mirror.