Douglas Kennedy Quotes

In family matters you can get over anything. That's one thing you'll learn as an adult. There's a lot you have to learn which is a lot worse than that. You'd never think of forgiving a friend for some of the things your parents did to you. But with friends it's different. Friends aren't the roll of the dice.

The child who would be an adult must give up any lingering childlike sense of parental power, either the magical ability to solveyour problems for you or the dreaded ability to make you turn back into a child. When you are no longer hiding from your parents, or clinging to them, and can accept them as fellow human beings, then they may do the same for you.

We're naturally programmed to endure a muddle of emotions as we leave childhood behind.

You just don't understand humility until you have children and get divorced.

It's easy to say you're more mature because all of a sudden you have a child, but it's a process.

There comes a point in your life when you realize your parents aren't perfect.

Once I started to grow up, I realised that my parents are normal people and they can make mistakes.

I think, more than anything else, my dog's death has made me grow up. I find myself thinking about the world in a more serious way.

As children, we develop some scorn for our parents and their imperfections.

It's an interesting thing to be in your forties and evaluate success and take ownership of some disasters and some pain and try to forgive a little bit - yourself and others.

I hated my father all my life but in his final days I forgave him for all the suffering he caused us. As you grow older, marry, and have children of you own, you learn and forget. I do not forget easily, but I do forgive.

People who hadn't suffered a loss yet struck me as not quite grown up.

...therefore all childish fear must be put away.

The job of every generation is to discover the flaws of the one that came before it. That's part of growing up, figuring out all the ways your parents and their friends are broken.

When women feel they have learned to forgive their mothers - and men, their fathers - all it usually means is that they've decided to allow themselves the same kind of behavior.

The most important thing about being a father is being able to forgive yourself. If you don't forgive yourself, you're not going to forgive your kids, either.

Father died last year. I don't subscribe to the theory by which we only become truly adult when our parents die; we never become truly adult.

At some point as adults we cease to be our parents' children and we become our children's parents instead.

When you feel protective toward your parents, you have become an adult.

Stop worrying about growing old. And think about growing up.

Stop blaming your parents. If you're really angry at 60 years old, you're an idiot! You've got to work some of it out.

They resumed walking. Alex felt an ache in his eyes and throat. "I don't know what happened to me," he said, shaking his head. "I honestly don't." Bennie glanced at him, a middle-aged man with chaotic silver hair and thoughtful eyes. "You grew up, Alex," he said, "just like the rest of us.

What we forgot as children is that our parents are children, also. The child in them has not been satisfied or met or loved, often.

I knew that part of friendship consisted in accepting a friend’s shortcomings, which sometimes included his parents.

It's not only children who grow. Parents do too.