Sherman Alexie 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.

My mother died when I was two years old; that's why I have so many daddy issues. And that's why my relationship with my dad is so strong.

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

Old as she was, she still missed her daddy sometimes.

I went to elementary school in L.A. I was born in L.A. My mother was from Redondo Beach. My father was French. He died six months before I was born, so my mother went home. I was born there. Not the childhood that most people think. Middle-class, raised by my mother. Single mom.

I was only a young girl of 13 when my father passed away from a sudden heart attack, leaving us unprepared to take on life without him. We had been protected from life's challenges so far. But without warning, all that changed overnight.

Parents are the centre of a person's solar system, even as an adult. My dad had a stronger gravitational pull than most, so his absence was bound to leave a deep and lasting void.

I don't remember much of my childhood. My father passed away when I was six, and sadly, I don't have the fuzziest, foggiest memory of him - what his voice was like, anything he ever said to me, nothing. My early years are a total blur.

I had a real bad attitude after my dad passed of liver cancer. I was 9, and we were really close.

My own mother died when I was 10 years old. My folks have told me that what little humor I have comes from her. I can't remember her humor, but I can remember her love and understanding of me.

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.

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.

I don't like feeling vulnerable. I think my mum and dad's divorce affected me more than I let on.

When a father, absent during the day, returns home at six, his children receive only his temperament, not his teaching.

People who lose their parents when young are permanently in love with them.

My father was out of my life when I was pretty young - when I was 7 years old, he was gone. I didn't see him for the rest of my childhood.

My father was gone when I was three years old.

Maybe sometimes, when I see some kids, you know, with their families. It's making me cry. You know, maybe when I ask them, sometimes, like, 'How does it feel to have a dad?' And, you know, they tell me this great answers, and sometimes I wish my dad was here.

But I still always felt the absence of a mother.

I never really got nightmares from movies. In fact, I recall my father saying when I was three years old that I would be scared, but I never was. I was much more terrified by my own family and real life, you know?

My grandmother died when my mother was just 11 years old, and consequently, my mother never learned how to cook particularly well.

To grow up with the loss of your mother is a scar that never goes away.

If you lose a parent, it never goes away. As a kid, I dreamed about my father coming back for 15 or 20 years. I still do sometimes.

I know it sounds really weedy, but we are all children who seek approval from our parents.

I was very close to my mother, and her death, which left a gaping hole in my life, has been very difficult for me and my father in a lot of ways.