“A man knows when he is growing old because he begins to look like his father.”

“A man doesn't grow old because he has lived a certain number of years. A man grows old when he deserts his ideal. The years may wrinkle his skin, but deserting his ideal wrinkles his soul.”

“When Lee has a certain look on his face, eyes kind of amused, mouth small and tight, he finds himself thinking of his father. He believes it is a look his father may have used. It feels like his father. A curious sensation, the look coming upon him, taking hold in an unmistakable way, and then his old man is here, eerie and forceful and whole, a meeting across worlds.”

“He did not know that the Old One was his father, for such a relationship was utterly beyond his understanding, but as he looked at the emaciated body he felt a dim disquiet that was the ancestor of sadness.”

“A good father. A man with a head, a heart, and a soul. A man capable of listening, of leading and respecting a child, and not of drowning his own defects in him. Someone whom a child will not only love because he's his father, but will also admire for the person he is. Someone he would want to grow up to resemble.”

“A man knows when he has found his vocation when he stops thinking about how to live and begins to live.”