Anne Sexton on family

When I’m writing, I know I’m doing the thing I was born to do.

But suicides have a special language.
Like carpenters they want to know which tools.
They never ask why build.

To love another is something
like prayer and it can’t be planned, you just fall
into its arms because your belief undoes your disbelief.

When I was a boy of 14, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around.
But when I got to be 21, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years.

The family you come from isn’t as important as the family you’re going to have.

Ring Lardner1885–1933

Fatherhood is pretending the present you love most is soap on-a-rope.

Bill Cosbyborn 1937