Blessed indeed is the man who hears many gentle voices call him father! – Lydia M. Child, Philothea: A Romance, 1836

My father, when he went, made my childhood a gift of a half a century. – Antonio Porchia, Voces, 1943, translated from Spanish by W.S. Merwin

There’s something like a line of gold thread running through a man’s words when he talks to his daughter, and gradually over the years it gets to be long enough for you to pick up in your hands and weave into a cloth that feels like love itself. – John Gregory Brown, Decorations in a Ruined Cemetery, 1994