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608cee6
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To be the father of growing daughters is to understand something of what Yeats evokes with his imperishable phrase 'terrible beauty.' Nothing can make one so happily exhilarated or so frightened: it's a solid lesson in the limitations of self to realize that your heart is running around inside someone else's body. It also makes me quite astonishingly calm at the thought of death: I know whom I would die to protect and I also understand that nobody but a lugubrious serf can possibly wish for a father who never goes away.
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fathers
mortality
death
religion
god
daughters
yeats
fatherhood
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Christopher Hitchens |
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cbb56dd
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Fathers never have exactly the daughters they want because they invent a notion a them that the daughters have to conform to.
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fathers
daughters
ideals
perception
expectations
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Simone de Beauvoir |
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33ba8e1
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"And then it occurs to me. They are frightened. In me, they see their own daughters, just as ignorant, just as unmindful of all the truths and hopes they have brought to America. They see daughters who grow impatient when their mothers talk in Chinese, who think they are stupid when they explain things in fractured English. They see that joy and luck do not mean the same to their daughters, that to these closed American-born minds "joy luck" is not a word, it does not exist. They see daughters who will bear grandchildren born without any connecting hope passed from generation to generation."
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women
joy
fear
family
hope
concepts
daughters
heritage
mothers
immigration
language
perception
ideas
tradition
luck
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Amy Tan |
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d9826a3
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I want to tell him that it's just a stupid car, but bits of me are scattered all over town; the graveyard, school, Cassie's room, the motel, and standing in from of the sink in my mother's kitchen. It takes too much energy to gather all the bits together, so I just sit there and watch him implode.
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relationships
daughters
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Laurie Halse Anderson |
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9a46a2c
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Your mother said that Fraser sent her back to me, knowing that I would protect her--and you. ... And like him, perhaps I send you back, knowing---as he knew of me--that he will protect you with his life. I love you forever, Brianna. I know whose child you truly are. With all my love, Dad.
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fathers
love
daughters
safety
protection
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Diana Gabaldon |
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421c020
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"This is a perfectly good picture. And if I didn't know you, I would be impressed and charmed. But I do know you." He thought some more, wondering whether he dared say precisely what he felt, for he knew he could never explain exactly why the idea came to him. "It's the painting of a dutiful daughter," he said eventually, looking at her cautiously to see her reaction. "You want to please. You are always aware of what the person looking at this picture will think of it. Because of that you've missed something important. Does that make sense?" She thought, then nodded. "All right," she said grudgingly and with just a touch of despair in her voice. "You win." Julien grunted. "Have another go, then. I shall come back and come back until you figure it out." "And you'll know?" "You'll know. I will merely get the benefit of it."
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individuality
independence
paintings
daughters
fulfillment
skills
duty
gift
expectation
perception
creativity
obedience
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Iain Pears |
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49d0095
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Mothers are urgently trying to tell something to their daughters, and this urgency is precisely what repels their daughters, forcing them to turn away. Mothers are left stranded, madly holding a lump of London clay, some grass, some white tubers, a dandelion, a fat worm passing the world through itself.
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family
life
love
repel
urgency
daughters
mothers
generations
mothers-and-daughters
london
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Zadie Smith |
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58f2428
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But can I say, now that she is dead, long dead that I only half believed in her. I wanted, I needed her to revolt. I know, revolutions take vast energy like volcanic eruptions. I know. And the sick must husband their resources even as they are resourceful for their husbands. But I couldn't help wanting for her, couldn't help the feeling that she'd given in, that she had measured out with coffee spoons what it was that she might ask of life and having found it lacking, tragically, gapingly lacking, had decided none-the-less to accept her modest share. I wanted her ignoble, irresponsible, unreasonable, petty, grasping, fucking greedy for the lot of it, jostling and spitting and clawing for every grain of life.
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daughters
anger
mothers
women-s-roles
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Claire Messud - The Woman Upstairs |
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4b795b6
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It will never end. Till the world ends in the chaos of Ragnarok, we will fight for our women, for our land, and for our homes. Some Christians speak of peace, of the evil of war, and who does not want peace? But then some crazed warrior comes screaming his god's filthy name into your face and his only ambitions are to kill you, to rape your wife, to enslave your daughters, and take your home, and so you must fight.
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rape
war
world
god
enslave
must
ragnarok
daughters
face
chaos
christians
wife
take
end
home
warrior
peace
kill
fight
evil
name
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Bernard Cornwell |
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ce93fa0
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This was why Kiki had dreaded having girls: she knew she wouldn't be able to protect them from self-disgust.
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daughters
girls
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Zadie Smith |
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e04a5e9
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Palmira. She's like an apparition floating unknowingly into her future,' I said. 'Here for too brief a time.
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time
daughters
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Susan Vreeland |