“I am choosing to write this book to my sons. They are little boys now and they will never know what they came from through me, unless I tell them... I want them to tell them directly.”
Steinbeck wrote his Journal of a Novel in 1951, a private daily letter to his editor Pascal Covici written alongside the manuscript of East of Eden. He explained from the first page that the novel itself was addressed to his sons Thom and John — that his deepest motive for writing it was to give them a record of where they came from.
There is more to this one. The full context — the events behind the words, what the author was living through, and how it applies to the specific situations of fatherhood — is in the app under Deeper Understanding.
Read the full context in DadViceDadVice matches wisdom like this to the real situations of fatherhood — the hard conversation, the long night, the moment you do not know what to say. Every quote is sourced. No motivational filler.