Frank Pittman Quotes

It was the first rent in the holy image of my father, it was the first fissure in the columns that had upheld my childhood, which every individual must destroy before he can become himself.

I think all of us are always five years old in the presence and absence of our parents.

There is no child left within me, none whatsoever.

Every man must define his identity against his mother. If he does not, he just falls back into her and is swallowed up.

All young men can relate to that moment where they have to - or, rather, attempt to - stand up to their dads with their own ideas of what they want for their own lives.

A real man doesn't have to run from his mother, and may even have to face the reality that no great deed is going to be great enough for him to ransom himself completely, and he may always be in his mother's debt. If he understands that . . . he won't have to feel guilty, and he won't have to please her completely. He can go ahead and be nice to her and let her be part of his life.

Being an adult child was an awkward, inevitable position. You went about your business in the world: tooling around, giving orders, being taken seriously, but there were still these two people lurking somewhere who in a split second could reduce you to nothing. In their presence, you were a big-headed baby again, crawling instead of walking.

I believe, when in my behavior or in relationships or in the way I react to something, that I'm still dealing with some leftover stuff from my childhood, but the good thing is now, because I have learned so much from the Bible, I can tell when I'm behaving wrong and when I'm not, and it doesn't take me very long to realize that's out of fear, or that's because I was controlled as a child, and I can make a conscious decision to behave the way I know I should behave.

My family still treats me like they did when I was 7 or 6.

Parenthood always involves recognizing your child as separate and different from you.

The greatest gift a parent can leave a child is that parent's own independence.

My father had a tremendous influence on me, and I think many children who come from broken homes, esp. when they're very early. My dad left when I was 3 1/2, and he left my mom and I. It was something in order to empower myself.

People have a right to change their minds and it has absolutely nothing to do with you. People change. As people change, their needs change. When people have a need, it is their responsibility to themselves to see their needs are met. And it has absolutely nothing to do with you.

You can't change people, but most importantly, unless you're their momma, you don't even know what's best for them.

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.

The most sophisticated people I've ever known had just one thing in common: they were all in touch with their inner children.

A woman should never underestimate the power of the child in the man. Sometimes the child seems to be in the driver's seat at the very moment when all a man's adult judgment and insight is needed.

There is one thing you and I as parents cannot do, not do we want to do if we really think about it, and that's control our children's will--that spirit that lets them be themselves apart from you and me. They are not ours to possess, control, manipulate, or even to make mind.

In most of our lives, we are accustomed to aiming at mastery and control and dominion- - over nature, over our lives, over our jobs, over our careers, over the goods that we buy.

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.

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.

How I imagined myself being 50 is not how I am feeling now. You think you'll be different, but I still feel like I am about 12 years old - mentally, not physically.

The children of childish parents age quickly.

Throughout my childhood, my parents dropped me off at a multitude of therapists' offices in hopes that I'd avoid growing up to be the kind of asshole who writes books about them. Also because it was sometimes easier than finding a nanny.

I'm the kind of father I wanted my father to be. That may be the sweetest revenge.