Parents can make us distrust ourselves. To them, we seem always to be works-in-progress.

. . . in the end, there is nothing a man can do that a woman can't, except be a father.

Fidelity is the single most important element in solidly enduring marriages.

The problem is simply this: no one can feel like CEO of his or her life in the presence of the people who toilet trained her and spanked him when he was naughty. We may have become Masters of the Universe, accustomed to giving life and taking it away, casually ordering people into battle or out of their jobs . . . and yet we may still dirty our diapers at the sound of our mommy's whimper or our daddy's growl.

No one, however powerful and successful, can function as an adult if his parents are not satisfied with him.

Every boy was supposed to come into the world equipped with a father whose prime function was to be our father and show us how tobe men. He can escape us, but we can never escape him. Present or absent, dead or alive, real or imagined, our father is the main man in our masculinity.

Love is not something people feel, but something people try to express no matter how they feel.