Oh, daddy, by what witchcraft have you coaxed that sulky rose-bush into bloom?'

'No witchcraft at all - it just bloomed because you were coming home, baby,' said her father.

She stared up at him, and her eyes were so large they looked like blue mint candies. 'I get to stay?'

'You're damn right you're staying, and I don't want to hear another word of disrespect.' His voice broke. 'I'm your father, and you damn well better love me the same way I love you, or you'll be sorry.'

The next thing he knew, he was grabbing her, and she was grabbing him, and all the bozos coming down the jerway trying to get past them were jabbing them with bags and briefcases, but he didn't care. He was holding tight to this daughter he loved so desperately, and he wasn't ever going to let her go.

Unlike Elise, who could discover parts of a person they didn't even know were absent, you specialized in tangible, but that, I feared, was only a matter of time.

Certain is it that there is no kind of affection so purely angelic as of a father to a daughter. In love to our wives there is desire; to our sons, ambition, but to our daughters there is something which there are no words to express.

She hated him for all her might. She hated him for leaving her all those years ago, she hated him for all the stares he’d given her every single time – the one that you had with a stranger; emotionless and cold – she hated him for forcing her to stay in the house with all the nasty souls, she hated him because she simply hadn’t known him very well.

My father is convinced that if I hadn't been a minister's daughter, I wouldn't have anything to write about,