Patricia Heaton Quotes

Until late in life, I was never quite good enough for my father, and I suppose that is part of what drives me even now, well after his death in 1992.

The idea that the family is this locus of support but can also hold you back and keep you down makes for good drama.

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 family was never happy with me. I could just say that across the board.

My father was often angry when I was most like him.

I'm attracted to how fraught the parent-child relationship is, swerving so easily between love and hostility, with almost no plausible way to end, unless someone dies.

I'm not a good father and they're not children any more; the eldest is in his fifties. My relationship with their mothers broke down and, because of what the law was, they went with their mothers and were imbued with their mothers' morality in life and they were not my people any more.

Nothing is quite so emotional and passionate as what goes on inside of a family. People are driven to distraction by a father or a mother or a husband. Or a child.

Scrawling 'I'm gay' in lipstick on your parents' bedroom mirror may demonstrate a personal signature of the highest style, but is not particularly sensitive to their feelings. Upon hearing me utter those words almost twenty years ago, my own mother did what and self-respecting middle-class mom would do: went directly into a seizure.

The kids get cheated out of a lot of times with their dad. They were good about it.

My parents' marriage was very rocky. They were always arguing. When they split up when I was in my 20s, my brother and I were both delighted because we knew they weren't good for each other.

My parents felt judged by me.

My parents were complicated people. They had a complicated relationship. My home was very, very complicated.

My father and mother were not that compatible. I don't think they had a good wedding night, and I was the product of that. We weren't close.

People feel very ashamed to admit that they have in-law problems. They think it's something petty. But it's not petty at all. It hits deep emotions.

My daughter is a bit annoyed with me that she didn't get to meet Baby Yoda.

I love my son, but I was never there for him, so I understand why he hates me.

Who hasn't had an argument with their mother-in-law?

I love my mum and dad, but they were shocking providers and carers.

I get along really well with [my father] now, but I had a terrible time with him in my teenage years. All we did was scream at each other, and when we weren't screaming at each other, we just wouldn't talk to each other.

Mom and Dad say I should make my life an example of the principles I believe in... But every time I do, they tell me to stop it.

Coming closer to home, there is so much of jealousy, pride, arrogance, and carping criticism; fathers who rise in anger over small, inconsequential things and make wives weep and children fear.

It was a dagger in the haughty father's heart, an arrow in his brain, to see how the flesh and blood he could not disown clung to this obscure stranger, and he sitting by. Not that he cared to whom his daughter turned, or from whom turned away. The swift sharp agony struck through him, as he thought of what his son might do.

It will be a beautiful family talk, mean and worried and full of sorrow and spite and excitement.

Against the long years when family bonds make up all that is happiest in life, there must always be reckoned those moments of agitation and revolution, during which the bosom of a family is the most unrestful and disturbing place in existence.