Fatherhood Quote by Dick Bruna

"My father realised that for me to become a publisher in his firm would have been the end of the firm!"

Dick Bruna, Artist

About this Quote

It lands like a punchline, but it’s really a family myth compressed into one perfectly self-deprecating sentence. Dick Bruna frames his origin story not as destiny fulfilled, but as a near-miss: had he followed the sensible route into his father’s publishing firm, the business would have collapsed. The joke flatters everyone at once. The father gets to look shrewd and unsentimental, choosing the firm’s survival over tradition. The son gets to dodge the nepo-baby narrative, presenting his eventual success as something earned precisely because he was steered away from inherited power.

Subtext: Bruna is quietly admitting he didn’t fit the machinery of commerce. Publishing, especially in mid-century Europe, prized networks, negotiation, and patience with institutions. Bruna’s gift was visual clarity and emotional directness - traits that don’t always translate into running a firm but can redefine children’s culture. The line also smuggles in a gentle critique of bourgeois expectation: the “proper” career path is positioned as the truly risky one, while the allegedly impractical path (making art) becomes the stabilizing choice.

Context matters. Bruna came out of a Dutch milieu where trade and pragmatism are cultural virtues; that makes the father’s “realisation” feel like both parental wisdom and a small act of rebellion. It’s a neat inversion: the family business survives because the heir doesn’t inherit it, and the family legacy expands because he goes off-script and invents a new one.

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About the Author

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Dick Bruna (August 23, 1927 - February 16, 2017) was a Artist from Netherland.

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