Nicole Krauss Quotes

Perhaps that is what it means to be a father - to teach your child to live without you.

You know your children are growing up when they stop asking you where they came from and refuse to tell you where they're going.

Some authority on parenting once said, "Hold them very close and then let them go." This is the hardest truth for a father to learn: that his children are continuously growing up and moving away from him (until, of course, they move back in).

I do think you are supposed to go through wars with your child because otherwise the tearing apart that has to happen when they go off to lead their own life would be unbearable.

My mom always made sure I lived my life as a regular kid.

I know parents have a hard time letting their kids spread their wings and fly.

My son is 14, and I only have this time with him. True, it's not like before when I couldn't explain to a little boy why I can't read him his bedtime story six nights a week. And he's even said to me, 'Mom, if you want to do a show somewhere, you should go.'

I want my kids to be good. I want them to be safe and have a great, long life. And take what they need from me and leave what they don't. Definitely leave what they don't.

You've got to learn to let go and let your children fall, and fail. If you try to protect them from hurt, and always rush to their side with Band-Aids, they won't learn about life, and what is true, what works, what helps, and what are real consequences of certain kinds of behavior. When they do get hurt, which they will, they won't know how to take care of their grown selves. They won't even know where the aspirin is kept.

My children are now adults and just kind of guide them while they allow you to have input in their lives without controlling them the way you did when they were toddlers. These are good steps to use for fathers at each step of their children's lives.

But kids don't stay with you if you do it right. It's the one job where, the better you are, the more surely you won't be needed in the long run.

. . . if we have children. When they are just born we do everything for them. We are omnipotent, they are completely dependent on us, but then when they grow up you must take back your influence on them, to give them freedom.

A good father. A man with a head, a heart, and a soul. A man capable of listening, of leading and respecting a child, and not of drowning his own defects in him. Someone whom a child will not only love because he's his father, but will also admire for the person he is. Someone he would want to grow up to resemble.

Fathers, provoke not your children to wrath.

In the end, it's not what you do for your children but what you've taught them to do for themselves.

Mama, you taught me to do the right things / So now you have to let your baby fly / You've given me everything that I will need / To make it through this crazy thing called life

. . . I would have let him go one finger at a time, until, without his realizing, he'd be floating without me. And then I thought, perhaps that is what it means to be a [parent] - to teach your child to live without you.

If you, as a parent, raise your children well, they won't need you anymore. If you did it properly, they go away.

Parents rarely let go of their children, so children let go of them. They move on. They move away. The moments that used to define them - a mother's approval, a father's nod - are covered by moments of their own accomplishments. It is not until much later, as the skin sags and the heart weakens, that children understand; their stories, and all their accomplishments, sit atop the stories of their mothers and fathers, stones upon stones, beneath the waters of their lives.

Fathers should speak with their children.

Train your child in the way in which you know you should have gone yourself.

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

I am my father's daughter. It was not up to me growing up. I was his hunting and fishing buddy, so I've been shooting my whole life.

I enjoy the freedom of living alone and not having anyone interfere with my belongings. I mean, I'm quite a selfish human being. I think being in the public eye and growing up, it's made me quite selfish in some respects. I can be extremely generous with friends, but in relationships I can be quite mean in terms of my time and my affections. I take people for granted, and I'm trying not to do that.