A Quote by Martin Scorsese
My working-class Italian-American parents didn't go to school, there were no books in the house.
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We were raised in an Italian-American household, although we didn't speak Italian in the house. We were very proud of being Italian, and had Italian music, ate Italian food.
When I grew up, my house contained only two books: the Bible and the 'Edmonds' cookbook. We were a working-class household. Books were a poor second to the television, which was always on, usually with me in front of it.
My upbringing was middle-class but my parents' families were both working-class so I had this odd combination of working-class background but in a privileged position.
My family was blue collar, a middle-class kind of thing. My father was born in Detroit, Italian-American. My mother is English. She acted on the stage with Diana Dors. Her parents were French.
I was a very earnest, hard working boy at school, but my parents were distressed because I was always bottom of the class. But I wasn't dilatory, I worked like crazy.
I was raised in an Italian catholic family in Baltimore, Maryland. Our faith is very important to us, our patriotism, love of faith, love of family, love of country. I took pride in our Italian American heritage and to be the first woman speaker of the House and the first Italian American speaker of the House, it's quite thrilling for me.
We've now got a group of young people in this country who for all practical purposes are American. They grew up here. They've gone to school here. They don't know anything other than being American kids. But their parents may have brought them here without all the proper paperwork - might have brought them here when they were three, might have brought them here when they were five. And so, lo and behold, by the time they finish school, and they're ready to go to college, they find out they can't go to college and, in fact, their status as Americans are threatened.
My parents wouldn't let me listen to 'American Idiot.' So it felt very rebellious to go over to my friend's house after school and listen to it in secrecy.
We were working class, and you don't lose that. Later on, I bolted on media middle class... and now people like me are in the House of Lords.
My father was an autodidact. It wasn't a middle-class house. Shopkeepers are aspirant. He paid for me to go to private school. He was denied an education - he had a horrible childhood. He got a place at a grammar school and wasn't allowed to go.
I had the luck that my parents educated me in three languages. With my mother I spoke Dutch, with my father Italian, and in the school I learned German. But my host language is Italian.
My parents were very, very strict parents, and they were not used to this new, you know, American custom of letting your children sleep in someone else's house.
It used to be that the working class, broadly speaking - Americans who worked with their hands, who worked in factories, who were not in management - were an interest group, a political interest group. And their main spokespersons were the Democrats. Their platform was the Democratic Party. And that began to change after the 1960s. Not for black or other working class Americans, but for white working class.
My parents were Quaker, and they were part of that old self-improving working class.
My parents grew up working class, but in that way that working class families do, they spent a fortune on education to better me.
All the time I was plowing through books on dyslexia, I found myself asking: what if, what if? What if you were a kid the 1950s with this condition, when there were no books on it, when there was no understanding of it. I remember kids in my class at school who just didn't seem to progress in their reading. There was no extra help. People just thought, "Oh, he or she isn't so bright, or they're obstinate."
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