I want to be a dad, first and foremost. I want to be a good father. I’ve spent so much of my life on the move and travelling around the world that just to set up a home for my family and be a good dad is something that motivates me.
When I was a boy I used to do what my father wanted. Now I have to do what my boy wants. My problem is: When am I going to do what I want?
My father was a research scientist in tropical medicine, so I always assumed I would be a scientist, too. I felt that medicine was too vague and inexact, so I chose physics.
A friend at school was always being laughed at because his father emptied dustbins for a living. But those who laughed worshipped famous footballers. This is an example of our topsy-turvy view of ‘success.’ Who would we miss most if they did not work for a month, the footballer or the garbage collector?
As a kid, I was always building things. My father had a shop in the house, and we built things – we were kind of a project family. I started out as a painter, and then painting led to cinema, and in cinema, you get to build so many things, or help build them.
Uncle Matheson and my father would frequently argue long into the night about politics. Like me, he was all about socialism, togetherness and investing in people, whereas Matheson, to this day, holds very strong conservative views.
My wife is from Copenhagen and her father has been a huge Liverpool supporter since the early 1960s.
My father will anticipate everything. He will leave you and me no chance to do a great and brilliant deed.
My father was the youngest of seven, and nobody lived to be 60. And so we were always sitting shiva in my house, and my father would say, ‘Life goes on.’
I’m a product of this visionary mother and father.
I’m a big fan of my father.
Judy Garland’s father was gay. That seems to be the consensus. They left Minnesota and went to California because he got caught with some boy backstage.
My mother is an incredibly beautiful woman who has laughed at every single thing my father’s ever said. At a young age, my brother and I understood that if you can make girls laugh, you can punch well above your weight class.
If a country is to be corruption free and become a nation of beautiful minds, I strongly feel there are three key societal members who can make a difference. They are the father, the mother and the teacher.
I was everything, patriarch, priest, father and judge.
Now I see other kids and their parents, and I compare them to my dad. Our dad was a really normal father when he was with us. We would get grounded if we did something bad. He would ground us. He wouldn’t call it grounding; he’d just say, ‘You’re on punishment.’ Sometimes we’d be on punishment a lot.
The first thing that I learned – and I understood it at a really young age – was that I could get a laugh. Really early. Because my mother and father are funny.
Family life was wonderful. The streets were bleak. The playgrounds were bleak. But home was always warm. My mother and father had a great relationship. I always felt ‘safe’ there.
I grew up in a society with a very ancient and strong oral storytelling tradition. I was told stories, as a child, by my grandmother, and my father as well.
People do think I’m Jewish. But we’re Irish Catholic. My father had a brogue.
My father was the superintendent of the churches in the state of Montana. He was content in his beliefs. He befit the term ‘true Christian.’ He would turn the other cheek. He was truly a man of peace.
People voted with their hearts as they were remembering the father.
Your enjoyment of the world is never right, till every morning you awake in Heaven: see yourself in your Father’s palace; and look upon the skies, the earth, and the air as celestial joys: having such a reverend esteem of all, as if you were among the angels.
My mother has been very instrumental in shaping up my career. Whatever I am today is because of her. Because I didn’t have a father, she played both the roles of a mother and a father in my life.
I felt my father’s presence with me, helping me to commit to paper the feelings I had. I really heard my father speaking to me from the other dimension.
My father is a jazz musician, so I grew up hearing jazz. My parents loved it, but I didn’t like it. It went on for too long. Yes, I had certain teachers that really inspired me, like Danny Barker, and John Longo. And I had no idea that I would have any impact on jazz.
I have Aboriginal roots on my father’s side, and have always indentified with that spirit. I feel a lot of my music comes from that place.
I always wanted to be a father and thought it would be great, but it just took the right woman and the right time to make it all happen.
I was an absolute maniac, a terrible husband and father.
My father was the captain of a cargo ship. When I was about two years old, we used to sail with him. The crew of his ship would dress me up in fancy dress and make me dance for them. I was a performing monkey!
I guess when you are left on your own, you find your true potential. I remember my father never came to our school even once.
I never really had that father figure to look up to. I think that’s the reason I’m so ambitious. I felt like I wasn’t appreciated as a child so I wanted to prove my worth as an adult, as an actor.
I am an expert of electricity. My father occupied the chair of applied electricity at the state prison.
We are taught you must blame your father, your sisters, your brothers, the school, the teachers – but never blame yourself. It’s never your fault. But it’s always your fault, because if you wanted to change you’re the one who has got to change.
My father was a sea captain, so was his father, and his father before him, and all my uncles. My mother’s people all followed the sea. I suppose that if I had been born a few years earlier, I would have had my own ship.
My grandfather was like a father figure to me.
He was definitely a father figure for all of us. Once you were a Giant, you were always a Giant.
If zeal had been appropriate for putting humanity right, why did God the Word clothe himself in the body, using gentleness and humility in order to bring the world back to his Father?
Think about one of the most powerful influences on a young child’s life – the absence of a father figure. Look back on recent presidents, and you’ll find an absent, or weak, or failed father in the lives of Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama.
I was shaped by a pit environment and the Second World War. My playground was on the pit tip at Clay Cross and I grew up with that mining background. My father was a miner and my granddad was a miner, and I would say three out of ten on the street where I was born were working in the pits.
I didn’t have parents, so I lived in people’s homes… And because I grew up with no parental role models, I learned to become my own friend, eventually my own father and my own mother.
My parents were early converts to Christianity in my part of Nigeria. They were not just converts; my father was an evangelist, a religious teacher. He and my mother traveled for thirty-five years to different parts of Igboland, spreading the gospel.
I don’t consult anyone – not my mother, not my father, anyone – about my work. And I must add that neither Dad nor Mom interfere in my work.
My mother had me when she was 15. My father died before I was born. So my mother was a teenage widow, and she used herself as her greatest example so I wouldn’t end up in her position.
When the Bangladesh war happened, people in Pakistan who did not support it were called unpatriotic. My father was in the jail at that time, and a lot of those who knew my family used to call us children of a traitor.
As a chef and father, it kills me that children are fed processed foods, fast food clones, foods loaded with preservatives and high-fructose corn syrup.
When I was growing up, I installed refrigerators in supermarkets. My father was an electrical engineer.
My father gave me some advice when I was very young – whatever someone tells you in the future, don’t forget Pele is the best.
I am a big believer that whatever has gone lies in the past. You should only learn from it, and you should only look at the present and the future. That’s been my father’s philosophy and mine as well.
The great lesson my mother and father gave me was almost invisible. It was a strong sense of being rooted.
I bet after seeing us, George Washington would sue us for calling him ‘father.’
Father’s Day is hopefully a time when the culture says, ‘This is our moment to look at who our men and boys are.’
Even if I accepted that Jesus – like almost every other prophet on record – was born of a virgin, I cannot think that this proves the divinity of his father or the truth of his teachings. The same would be true if I accepted that he had been resurrected.
To a father growing old nothing is dearer than a daughter.
Guns in America have an atavistic force. Possessing them, or the act of not possessing them, is an identity that seems to pass from father to son.
I learned from the example of my father that the manner in which one endures what must be endured is more important than the thing that must be endured.
Our heavenly Father understands our disappointment, suffering, pain, fear, and doubt. He is always there to encourage our hearts and help us understand that He’s sufficient for all of our needs. When I accepted this as an absolute truth in my life, I found that my worrying stopped.
