My mother and father didn’t know anything about instruments. Me just see a man in the country play guitar one time and say, ‘My, the man play that guitar nice.’
My mother insisted that I pursue music. I rented out my father’s musical equipment and earned some money. As a child, I wasn’t sure about a career goal, but I was always fascinated by electronic gadgets, specially musical equipment.
I remember reading the book ‘Rich Dad, Poor Dad,’ and I remember writing my goals down, and my number one goal in life was just to be a good husband and a good father someday. That was number one, as a 17-year-old kid.
I just want to be that to my children. The ultimate father.
My father was my teacher. But most importantly he was a great dad.
You don’t have to deserve your mother’s love. You have to deserve your father’s.
My father blamed me for my brother Gunther’s death, for not bringing him home. He died in an avalanche as we descended from the summit of Nanga Parbat, one of the 14 peaks over 8,000m, in 1970. Gunther and I did so much together. It was difficult for my father to understand what it was like up there.
I cast my first vote on my father’s lap in 1960, for Richard Nixon, in the voting booth. I was 8.
I’ve always had trouble with male authority figures because my father was such a martinet.
My father is Italian, and I never met my paternal grandparents. The family name was ‘Caroselli’ and it was changed in the mid ’50s. I think they wanted to assimilate, which was pretty common, although I love the name ‘Caroselli.’
I was born in Somalia, which is in East Africa. My parents started with nothing: poor, poor, poor. They eloped, which was unheard of in my country, when my father was 17 and my mother was 14.
I understood that my family was rich in love but would probably never own the land my father, John, dreamed of owning. My mother, Willie Ella Mays Clarke, was a washerwoman for poor white folks in the area of Columbus, Georgia where the writer Carson McCullers once lived.
I was born on the 24th of September 1755 in the county of Fauquier, at that time one of the frontier counties of Virginia. My father possessed scarcely any fortune and had received a very limited education – but was a man to whom nature had been bountiful, and who had assiduously improved her gifts.
My parents took an interest in nothing, at home no books, no records. My mother and my father are the emblem of indifference, dryness and bad taste. My father is also terribly stingy, in life as well as in feelings: I have never seen him filling up the bathtub.
Sometimes I wake up before dawn, and I love sitting up in the middle of the bed with all the lights off, pitch-black dark, and talking to the Father, with no interruptions and nothing that reminds me that there’s anything in life but me and Him.
We were all miners in our family. My father was a miner. My mother is a miner. These are miner’s hands, but we were all artists, I suppose, really. But I was the first one who had the urge to express myself on paper rather than at the coalface.
My father passed away in 1942, and three-four months after his death, I had to start working. There was a responsibility on my shoulders to run the household. It was my duty as the eldest child in the house.
Come, come, leave business to idlers, and wisdom to fools: they have need of ’em: wit be my faculty, and pleasure my occupation, and let father Time shake his glass.
My father is strong in his legs, and I think I get that from him. I am stronger there than in my upper body, but that is what gives me a low centre of gravity. It makes it harder for opponents to get me off the ball.
My father is the man that, he will give you what he doesn’t have, still. If he has 10 bucks and you need 10 bucks because you’re sick or you don’t have nothing to eat, he will give you 10 bucks. He will be at zero, but he will help you. That’s the kind of man that my father is.
Is it wrong for me to love my own? Is it wicked for me because my skin is red? Because I am Sioux? Because I was born where my father lived? Because I would die for my people and my country?
My father was a Gujarati and my mom Turkish.
Most boys’ first hero is their father. That was definitely true of my dad. He was a proud Irish American and he taught me a lot about ethics and responsibility. He also introduced me to a lot of wonderful folk music.
My father was a bricklayer, and my mother was a housewife. It was complicated, obviously, because of our humble origin, but thank God we were all focused.
I grew up without a father, so I have to be on point for my kids.
My father is my idol, so I always did everything like him. He used to work two jobs and still come home happy every night.
My brother’s my teacher, my mentor, and we both learnt all the acting basics from our father.
My father is just getting better and better, and that speaks so well of the way he approaches the work.
I didn’t have the drive; I never wanted to be in show business. I went into my father’s business because of osmosis.
I’m quite sensitive to women. I saw how my sister got treated by boyfriends. I read this thing that said when you are in a relationship with a woman, imagine how you would feel if you were her father. That’s been my approach, for the most part.
I’m sick of very white teeth and lots of gymnasium practice. I’m bored, you know, send in the next one. I wanted a real man that I could believe was my brother, my father, you know, my next-door neighbor – a real person.
It is impossible to please all the world and one’s father.
I feared disappointing my father more than anything in the world.
My father Dwarakaprasad Bedi had an electrical accessories factory in Delhi.
I’m a father to four kids, so it bothers me that even though our children think big naturally, our society systematically trains them out of thinking that way.
I always had a philosophy which I got from my father. He used to say, ‘Listen. God gave to you the gift to play football. This is your gift from God. If you take care of your health, if you are in good shape all the time, with your gift from God no one will stop you, but you must be prepared.’
I’m kind of like both of them: My mother grew up wanting to save the world, and my father grew up wanting to rule the world.
My father was often angry when I was most like him.
I am very much an only child, meaning I am self-reliant, egocentric, sociable. I had my mother, father, and an uncle who lived with us, all doting on me.
Don’t try to guess what it is people want and give it to them. Don’t ask for a show of hands. Try your best to write what you like, what you think your friends would like and what you think your father would like and then cross your fingers… The most valuable thing you have is your own voice.
The wonderful John Avildsen was a hero and father figure who was really present in my life even though we didn’t have day-to-day or year-to-year.
Becoming a father is incredible. There is no explanation for the feeling.
My father has been serious with me because he wanted me to have the best opportunities to do well. I think that has been a huge benefit for me coming from a small country like Norway.
If you go from a structure where you have the support and that partner and that construction of a family and that’s broken apart, I think that’s probably a lot harder than always being a single mom and having the father being a support in another area.
But I’m a great father. That’s why I got custody.
My mother had introduced me to a lot of my father’s friends because she believed that I would get to know the guy my dad was better through his friends than just in the hospital visits.
I was scared when I lost my mother, my father, my brother, my sister.
I don’t know where my father is from. I just don’t. He’s lived in so many countries.
My father would invite me sweetly to come and sit on a stool at his feet, and, as I let myself trustingly down, he would gently kick the seat from under me – and laugh.
So the first job that I got – my father got it for me – he had his clerical collar on, was a gay bar in D.C., it was Mr. Henry’s of Georgetown.
Every son needs his father to be a hero and my father is like a superhero!
My parents were, had a marriage of passion, and the passion was about their religious beliefs. They were both immigrant families that – well, my father’s family came as Puritans to Massachusetts.
My mother wrote a teen column for the South China Morning Post in the 1950s when she was growing up in Hong Kong. Her name was Lily Mark, but she sometimes wrote under her confirmation name, Margaret Mark. That was how she met my father.
My father was from Northern Ireland, and coming from somewhere like that, your faith defines you. That’s something we don’t really understand outside Northern Ireland, but because of my parents and grandparents, I’ve experienced it.
My father was a general manager with Hyatt, so we lived in the hotel so he would be close by if there were any problems. My mum was always adamant about us not abusing it. So I still had to clean my room. Housekeeping would never come and do it.
Your most important friendships should be with your own brothers and sisters and with your father and mother. Love your family. Be loyal to them. Have a genuine concern for your brothers and sisters.
