Mordecai Richler Quotes

I'm from a big family - I'm the youngest of seven - and my wife is one of four. So we always wanted a lot of kids. It's what we're used to, and for us it's what life is all about.

I'm currently raising a 15 year old son and an 18 year old daughter, which a guess is my punishment for a wild youth!

I grew up as an only child and my mother was also an only child, so we were both very passionate about reading. I think I passed that on to my daughter, who went plowing through 'Harry Potter' and every other book possible!

No matter how good you are, at some point your kids are gonna have to create their own independence and think that Mom and Dad aren't cool, just to establish themselves. That's what adolescence is about. They're gonna go through that no matter what.

My daughter, Anna, is almost 15, and my son, Ben, is almost 10.

My love of reading and the English language is something given to me by my parents, and I've passed it on to my children.

You know your children are growing up when they stop asking you where they came from and refuse to tell you where they're going.

I know parents have a hard time letting their kids spread their wings and fly.

I can see why people keep having babies. We were looking at a school for my youngest this morning, and there were all these little boys and girls. So sweet. And then the teenagers walk past, and, my God, they're enormous, and I bet they don't kiss their mummies. I'm just going to force my children to remain lovely.

My son is 14, and I only have this time with him. True, it's not like before when I couldn't explain to a little boy why I can't read him his bedtime story six nights a week. And he's even said to me, 'Mom, if you want to do a show somewhere, you should go.'

Every big leaguer and his wife should teach their children to pray, God bless Mommy, God bless Daddy, and God bless Babe Ruth.

What I've learned from fatherhood is that having a son cannot, did not, change my love for The Bachelor! I thought that having a son would make me grow up when it came to my TV viewing habits, but I love The Bachelor even more after having a child.

I cannot for the life of me understand why small children take so long to grow up. I think they do it deliberately, just to annoy me.

As the children get older and know what they want ... We all grew up at one point.

The invention of the teenager was a mistake. Once you identify a period of life in which people get to stay out late but don't have to pay taxes - naturally, no one wants to live any other way.

I'm much more concerned with being a good dad than a good actor, being there for my children, educating them and hopefully helping them avoid some of the mistakes that I've made.

And there was, in those Ipswich years, for me at least, a raw educational component; though I used to score well in academic tests, I seemed to know very little of how the world worked and was truly grateful for instruction, whether it was how to stroke a backhand, mix a martini, use a wallpaper steamer, or do the Twist. My wife, too, seemed willing to learn. Old as we must have looked to our children, we were still taking lessons, in how to be grown-up.

When your children are teenagers, it's important to have a dog so that someone in the house is happy to see you.

I just wanted my daughter to grow up, get married, have children and get divorced like everyone else.

Each of us owes it to our spouse, our children, our friends, to be as happy as we can be. And if you don't believe me, ask a child what it's like to grow up with an unhappy parent, or ask parents what they suffer if they have an unhappy child.

Children learn to read by being in the presence of books. The love of knowledge comes with reading and grows upon it. and the love of knowledge, in a young mind, is almost a warrant against the inferior excitement of passions and vices.

When I was a child at sixteen, I was just a child. All sixteen year-olds are just children. As much as we like them to be adults, they are just children. And like all children, they need their mother, and they need their father. All children need their mother and their father. All children are entitled to their mother and their father.

A boy has two jobs. One is just being a boy. The other is growing up to be a man.

Dance. Dance for the joy and breath of childhood. Dance for all children, including that child who is still somewhere entombed beneath the responsibility and skepticism of adulthood. Embrace the moment before it escapes from our grasp. For the only promise of childhood, of any childhood, is that it will someday end. And in the end, we must ask ourselves what we have given our children to take its place. And is it enough?

It's a little known fact, but parents are like superheroes. With just a few magic words they can make you feel ten feet tall and bulletproof, they can slay the dragons of doubt and worry, they can make your problems disappear. But of course they can only do this as long as you're a child. When you've become an adult, become the master of your own universe, they're not as powerful as they once were. Maybe that's why so many of us take our time growing up.