Henning Mankell Quotes

I had a very distant relationship with my father. It was always just me and my mother. It was a shattering blow when she died. I was 16.

I grew up in an all-female family - two sisters and a mostly single mother - and we often bonded, in part, by disparaging men and feeling superior to them.

You women will live as if father is still alive and in the next room.

Most of me was glad when my mother died. She was a handful, but not in a cute, festive way. More in a life-threatening way, that had caused me a long time ago to give up all hope of ever feeling good about having had her as a mother.

I've lost lots of men in my life, besides my mother, which is a whole different loss.

It is obvious that the role of the father as the central authority in the family has been considerably challenged in Western societies. Parental responsibilities, and I knowingly use the term responsibility instead of the term authority still used in the French Civil code, are nowadays shared equally between both parents.

My dad died when I was young; my mom remarried with more haste than sense to a fellow... he wasn't evil or anything, but he was worthless.

I was raised an orphan... My mother died when I was 2 years old.

My mother always thought if her mother hadn't left her, she would have been happy. All the problems she had never would have happened.

That was the toughest thing I ever had to do: tell my son that his mum was gone. I was a bachelor living on the beach, but I had to pull it together very quick for my boy.

My mother left behind three daughters when she went to America and started a new life. I certainly felt abandoned when my father died of a brain tumour; I felt he had abandoned me to this terrible, volatile mother and I had no protection.

I learned early on that family, as far as my mother and father, were not an option.

My mom died when I was 22. My stepfather, who I loved like a father, pretty quickly got involved with another woman. Suddenly there was another woman sleeping in my mother's bed, and it was very difficult. Their relationship brought up my profound loss, and the truth was that my family would never be the same again.

Her mother died at the age of 29, essentially turning her face to the wall and deciding to die. And so we can only imagine the agony she felt. And Eleanor Roosevelt really wanted to make her mother happier, and - and to make her live, you know, make her want to live. And there's something about, you know, when your mother dies, this sense of abandonment. I think Eleanor Roosevelt had a lifelong fear of abandonment and sense of abandonment after her parents' death.

My mother left me when I was 2 years old which is devestating to a child.

The older we women grow, the more clearly we see what men really are: hypocrites, boasters, he-goats. The older men grow, the more they doll us up with every perfection.

I had a very turbulent and painful childhood, like many people. I left for college when I was 16 years old and up until that point I'd lived in five different family configurations. Each one ended or changed through a death or some terrible loss.

I grew up around lots of men - my father, my brothers, my uncles - so I wasn't intimidated by them.

In little more than a generation, feminism has obliterated roles. If you wonder why so many men choose not to get married, the answer lies in large part in the contemporary devaluation of the husband and of the father - of men as men, in other words.

I'm definitely more attracted to chaos than to order. The point is, I find the female roles out there very cliche. If we are limited to being only lovers or mothers, we are limiting ourselves.

If you live for your children, they may be smitten down and leave you desolate, or, what is far worse, they may desert you and leave you worse than childless in a cold and unfeeling world.

Daddy was real gentle with kids. That's why I expected so much out of marriage, figuring that all men should be steady and pleasant.

We don't think only men can be powerful and strong. Behind the heads of the Mafia, the leaders of culture, there are always very strong women. European culture is a matriarchy, especially in the south. The women have a lot of power.

My experience in childhood and adolescence of the subordinate role played by the female in a society run entirely by men had convinced me that I was not cut out to be a wife.

The basic discovery about any people is the discovery of the relationship between men and women.