My mother and father took me in and provided everything for me - the love, nurturing, basic necessities - to give me the space to grow wings, so that when I went out into the world, I could fly.
My mother used to pitch to me and my father would shag balls. If I hit one up the middle close to my mother, I'd have some extra chores to do. My mother was instrumental in making me a pull hitter.
It is the women who bring the men to this world: men are there because of women. It was my mother who brought me out of a health condition that threatened to usurp me completely. If we still treat women with disrespect, it is utterly shameful.
My father, my uncles, my aunts, from my father's side and my mother's side... they were all professional musicians. My father was a concert master, he took me to a lot of rehearsals, concerts, performances, opera, ballet. For me, that was life.
Man is afraid, the world is a strange world, and man wants to be secure, safe. In childhood the father protects, the mother protects. But there are many people, millions of them, who never grow beyond their childhoods. They remain stuck somewhere, and they still need a father and a mother. Hence God is called the Father or the Mother. They need a divine Father to protect them; they are not mature enough to be on their own. They need some security.
People get so frustrated with me, so much so that they've threatened me, they've threatened my family and it just cannot go on, it really can't.
You do have this circumstance in Karachi that because people know things are changing, the stakes are higher. Everyone is thinking, "My home is threatened, my job is threatened, my identity is threatened, my world is threatened." And that creates a very particular sort of climate, that is linked.
Look at me. We aren´t them lauren. You´re not your mother or father any more than I´m my mother. You´re you and I´m me and I love you.
Attachment is misery, but from the very beginning the child is taught for attachment. The mother will say to the child, "Love me; I am your mother." The father will say, "Love me; I am your father" - as if someone is a father or a mother so he becomes automatically lovable.
Before I had a son, I used to look at my father's example: he left me, he left my mother. When I had a son, I got caught in the same situation that his mother don't want me to see him. I started looking at my father in a different light.
He [God] watched over me before I knew him, and before I learned sense or even distinguished between good and evil, and he protected me, and consoled me as a father would his son.
I don't fear death. I remember my last meeting with my father when he told me, "You know, tonight when I will be killed, my mother and my father will be waiting for me." It makes me weepy ... but I don't think it can happen unless God wants it to happen because so many people have tried to kill me.
Boxing kept me out of the streets, by giving me something to do. And it gave me a father figure in the coach that was there for me. I just reiterated what my mother was trying to teach me about focusing and getting my life together.
My father was raised by a violent alcoholic. There was alcoholism in my mother's family. I'm half-adopted, and my birth father was a drug addict and alcoholic. So, I think they very consciously made decisions and parented me in a way that was aimed to help save me from that. So, I knew it would be particularly painful and it was, especially for my father.
On a personal level, there are many people who have meant a great deal to me. My father and mother were certainly of vital importance, not only in themselves but because they created a world for me to revolt against.
I have the strength from my mother, the survivability. I have wonderful qualities from my mother - but please, Mother, forgive me - I heard judgment constantly about my father.