A Father's Story Quotes

“There were the things he used to sustain life: a box of fish food. And the things he'd used to take it: a pair of nickel-plated handcuffs.”
― Lionel Dahmer, A Father's Story

“It was a level of obliviousness, or perhaps denial, that was scarcely imaginable, and yet it was real. It was as if I had locked my son in a soundproofed booth, then drawn the curtains so that I could neither hear nor see what he had become.”
― Lionel Dahmer, A Father's Story

“His social life, which should have been expanding, narrowed to a circle that was no larger than his mind, an imagined world in which his friends were phantoms, his lovers mere lumps of unmoving flesh.”
― Lionel Dahmer, A Father's Story

“In the eyes of parents, I think, children always seem just a blink away from redemption. No matter to what depth we watch them sink, we believe they need only grasp the lifeline, and we can still pull them safely to shore. For many years, I had been just that naive, a father who'd grasped at every straw, believed every lie, extended one hand after another, and through it all, continued to believe that there was something salvageable in the wreckage of his son.”
― Lionel Dahmer, A Father's Story