Daddy Issues Quotes

“emptying out of my mother's belly
was my first act of disappearance
learning to shrink for a family
who likes their daughters invisible
was the second
the art of being empty
is simple
believe them when they say
you are nothing
repeat it to yourself
like a wish
i am nothing
i am nothing
i am nothing
so often
the only reason you know
you're still alive is from the
heaving of your chest”
― Rupi Kaur, milk and honey

“Abusive relationships exist because they provide enough rations of warmth, laughter, and affection to clutch onto like a security blanket in the heap of degradation. The good times are the initial euphoria that keeps addicts draining their wallets for toxic substances to inject into their veins. Scraps of love are food for an abusive relationship.”
― Maggie Young

“I think we're all monsters deep down, if we're pushed to that extent. Maybe if I felt like he was my father I could hate him. How could I hate a man that was just a stranger to me?”
― Amina Khan, Loathing You

“You may not have loved me,' I whisper, my tears dropping onto his face and trailing down the smile lines around his mouth. 'But I loved you, and my love was never a lie.”
― Jessica S. Olson, Sing Me Forgotten

“Another thing I knew:
I knew my sister, Laleh, wasn't an accident.
Many people thought so, because she was eight years younger than me, and my parents weren't "trying for another child," which is kind of gross if you think about it. But she wasn't an accident.
She was a replacement. An upgrade. I knew that without anyone saying it out loud.
And I knew Stephen Kellner was relieved to have another chance, a new child who wouldn't be such a disappointment. It was written across his face every time he smiled at her. Every time he sighed at me.
I didn't blame Laleh for that.
I really didn't.
But sometimes I wondered if I was the one who was an accident.
That's normal.
Right?”
― Adib Khorram, Darius the Great Is Not Okay

“I neglected you because I was mad at myself. I was mad that I couldn’t build the life I envisioned for you when you were born. And I took out that anger on you.”
― Soroosh Shahrivar, Tajrish

“Carl’s abuse isn’t obvious. It’s not something one can even notice while it’s happening. Carl doesn’t do you the favor of punching you in the face and sending you to school with a black eye so that you have a fighting chance of being rescued. Carl doesn’t hit, scream, or molest, allowing you to know you’re being mistreated.”
― Maggie Young

“He isn't my father. He's your husband. I have no relations to him other than the fact he's married to you, and once he divorces you as everyone else did, he'll be another irrelevant figure in my life who tried to be more.”
― Beariem

“My father is more likely to throw me in the ocean than throw me a ball.”
― Hannah F. Whitten, For the Throne

“He doesn't love you," she said matter-of-factly. "He didn't love your mother, either, and I don't want you to spend your whole life waiting for something he can't give. Men like that, people are things to them. That's why he can pick you up and drop you as easily. But you're not a thing, Brandon. You're wonderful, and if he can't see that, he's broken. Not you. Don't ever forget that.”
― Kiersten White, Hide

“He’s my fucking dad, Lexi, you sick bitch!” he screams at me, his eyes wild as spit bubbles on his lips.
I refuse to sit here and cower, so I climb from the bed and cross my arms, glaring at him.

“Yeah, well, now I call him Daddy.” I smirk.”
― K.A. Knight, Daddy's Angel

“Her father. The man who is supposed to be her North Star.”
― Soroosh Shahrivar, Tajrish

“She was beginning to think that perhaps he isn’t the strong man she thought he was. He was just a boy. His father had placed the whole world at his feet and he had daddy issues? If only she would start telling him about her own father. The beatings, the neglect, the lack of support, the lack of love. What is his excuse? Daddy didn’t hug you enough? She was growing impatient and just wanted to get out and cry on her own.”
― Soroosh Shahrivar, Tajrish

“Admittedly, she had recently started to question her father's rules. Her independence and education had afforded her the ability to think for herself and question old principles. And lately, she couldn't help being more combative with her papá. She wanted to challenge his ideologies and stop him from treating his wife and daughters as his property.”
― Alana Albertson, Kiss Me, Mi Amor

“For me you took on the enigmatic quality that all tyrants have whose rights are based on their person and not on reason. At least so it seemed to me.”
― Franz Kafka, Letter to His Father

“Of course, Papa had the right to remarry. He lost his wife. He was still a young man for a widower. It's only right that he should have wanted to wed again and have more children. No one wants to be alone.
What Gerald did not seem to realize, damn him, was how alone Kate had been all those years, growing up on the moors with no companions but the falcons and the wild ponies--- and of course, her books. In silent empathy, Rohan yearned to hold her though she had quickly masked her pain.
She seemed all right now; she really was the most resilient, brave, unselfish, and remarkable woman he had ever met. But if she was still hurting, she might not rebuff the offer of his body, the consolation of his lovemaking.”
― Gaelen Foley, My Dangerous Duke

“Your father ruined my life; you will not ruin my daughter's! I don't give a damn for your rank. You will marry her, do you understand me?"
"Papa!"
"Stay out of this, girl---"
"No, you stay out of it!" she shouted without warning.
He looked her up and down in outrage, but Kate's temper snapped. "Leave him alone! I've managed just fine these past many years without a father, so don't think you can come barging into my life and immediately tell me whom to marry!"
"Oho, so you do reproach me?" he exclaimed. "I knew it!"
"You sailed off and forgot about me!" she cried.
"I did not!"
"You went on with your life! Your new family. Well, I went on with mine, too," she flung out as the anger burst from her more sharply than she had intended. "Warrington is my lover. So what? Welcome to the world.”
― Gaelen Foley, My Dangerous Duke

“I'm not interested in your charity, Duke! Remember yesterday?"
The dolt had surely had not forgotten her hurling his money at his head.
"As for you, Papa, you forfeited the right to pick my husband when you had Charley lie to me and tell me you were dead. So, kill each other if you like. You're both fools, as far as I'm concerned!"
With a furious sob, she ran the rest of the way to her cabin, leaving the two oddly similar men behind in an awkward, stymied silence.”
― Gaelen Foley, My Dangerous Duke

“He walks around the table and gives his daughter a hug. All of her pain, all of her sorrows. All of the vile memories of Amir vanished. She cried and Mehdi’s chest now bore the tears of his daughter. “Be the river, azizam,” he said as he pulled back and kissed her on the forehead.”
― Soroosh Shahrivar, Tajrish

“She had been longing for her father’s touch as far as she could remember. With all of his flaws, with all of his shortcomings, she still loved and admired her father.”
― Soroosh Shahrivar, Tajrish

“Neglect and a man’s empowering presence were muddy waters for her.”
― Soroosh Shahrivar, Tajrish

“No, her father was ashes in the wind, his existence marked only by a headstone on a hill outside the city. Or so her sisters had told her.

I loved you from the first moment I held you in my arms, her father had said to her in those last moments together.

Don't lay your filthy hands on my daughter. Those had been his final words, spat at the King of Hybern. Her father had squandered those final words on that worm of a king.

Her father. The man who had never fought for his children, not until the end. When he had come to save them- to save the humans and the Fae, yes, but most of all, his daughters. Her.

A grand, stupid waste.

Unholy dark power flowed through her, and it had not been enough to stop the King of Hybern from snapping his neck.

She had hated her father, hated him deeply, and yet he had loved her, for some inexplicable reason. Not enough to try to spare them from poverty or keep them from starving. But somehow it had been enough for him to raise an army on the continent. To sail a ship named for her into battle.

She had still hated her father in those last moments. And then his neck had cracked, his eyes not full of fear as he died, but of that foolish love for her.

That was what had lingered- the look in his eyes. The resentment in her heart as he died for her. It had festered, gnawing at her like the power she buried deep, running rampant through her head until no icy baths could numb it away.

She could have saved him.

It was the King of Hybern's fault. She knew that. But it was hers, too. Just as it was her fault that Elain had been captured by the Cauldron after Nesta spied on it with that scrying, her fault that Hybern had done such terrible things to hunt her and her sisters down like a deer.

Some days, the sheer dread and panic locked Nesta's body up so thoroughly that nothing could get her to breathe. Nothing could stop the awful power from beginning to rise, rise, rise in her. Nothing beyond the music at those taverns, the card games with strangers, the endless bottles of wine, and the sex that made her feel nothing- but offered a moment of release amid the roaring inside her.”
― Sarah J. Maas, A ​Court of Silver Flames

“In life my mother had ably shielded me from rejection, from the callous and cold detachment of this man. And I had been safe with her warmth to sorround me. But in dying, she coukd not absorb this hurt for me anymore.”
― Bella Mackie, How to Kill Your Family

“She plucked another figurine from the mantle: a rose carved from a dark sort of wood. She held it in her palm, its solid weight surprising, and traced a finger over one of the petals. 'He made this one for Elain. Since it was winter and she missed the flowers.'

'Did he ever make any for you?'

'He knew better than to do that.' She inhaled a shuddering breath, held it, released it. Let her mind calm. 'I think he would have, if I'd given him the smallest bit of encouragement, but... I never did. I was too angry.'

'You'd have your life overturned. You were allowed to be angry.'

'That's not what you told me the first time we met.' She pivoted to find him arching a brow. 'You told me I was a piece of shit for letting my younger sister go into the woods to hunt while I did nothing.'

'I didn't say it like that.'

'The message was the same.' She squared her shoulders, turning to the small broken cot in the shadows beside the fireplace. 'And you were right.”
― Sarah J. Maas, A ​Court of Silver Flames

“My father slept here for years, letting us have the bedroom. That bed in there... I was born in that bed. My mother died in that bed. I hate that bed.' She ran a hand over the cracking wood of the cot's frame. Splinters snagged at her fingertips. 'But I hate this cot even more. He'd drag it in front of the fire every night and curl up there, huddling under the blankets. I always thought he looked so... so weak. Like a cowering animal. It enraged me.

'Does it enrage you now?' A casual, but careful question.

'It...' Her throat worked. 'I thought him sleeping here was a fitting punishment while we got the bed. It never occurred to me that he wanted us to have the bed, to keep warm and be as comfortable as we could. That we'd only been able to take a few items of furniture from our former home and he'd chosen the bed as one of them. For our comfort. So we didn't have to sleep on cots, or on the floor.' She rubbed at her chest. 'I wouldn't even let him sleep in the bed when the debtors shattered his leg. I was so lost in my grief and rage and... and sorrow, that I wanted him to feel a fraction of what I did.' Her stomach churned.

He squeezed her shoulder, but said nothing.

'He had to have known that,' she said hoarsely. 'He had to have known how awful I was, and yet... he never yelled. That enraged me, too. And then he named a ship after me. Sailed it into battle. I just... I can't understand why.'

'You were his daughter.'

'And that's an explanation?' She scanned his face, the sadness etched there. Sadness- for her. For the ache in her chest and the stinging in her eyes.

'Love is complicated.”
― Sarah J. Maas, A ​Court of Silver Flames

“If we were to realise the perilous situation we were in on account of our childhoods, we might exercise extreme vigilance around people we were insitinctively attracted to. We might assume that almost anyone we felt mysteriously and powerfully drawn to would probably turn out to be wrong. We might learn to resist falling in love at first sight- and would be just as careful about swiftly falling into hatred. We would undestand that we needed to fight our insticts at every turn, because of how badly our pasts have corrupted them.”
― The School of Life, How Ready Are You For Love?: A path to more fulfilling and joyful relationships

“Nixon has been the subject of more psychobiographies than any other politician. His career vindicates one of that maligned genre's most trustworthy findings: the recipe for a successfully driven politician should include a doting mother to convince the son he can accomplish anything, and an emotionally distant father to convince the son that no accomplishment can ever be enough.”
― Rick Perlstein, Nixonland: The Rise of a President and the Fracturing of America

“He would have been handsome in his heyday, and hell, he was a silver fox now. My daddy issues didn’t run that deep, though.”
― Grace McGinty, The Daymakers

“I smiled, knowing all too-well, that my father was finally starting to realize that we were no longer in his control, and his reign as our puppet master was long over.”
― Emily Grace, River Of Sorrows

“kendi iyiliği için,
sevdiğinden bağırdığını
her söylediğinde kızına,
öfke ile iyiliği karıştırmayı
öğretiyorsun ona
mantıklı gelse de başta,
büyüyüp serpildikçe
canını yakan adamlara
güveniyor kızın
çünkü onlar
tıpkı sen
- kız babalarına”
― Rupi Kaur, milk and honey