A Quote by Richard Rodriguez
I became a writer not because my father was one - my father made false teeth for a living. I became a writer because the Irish nuns who educated me taught me something about bravery with their willingness to give so much to me.
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I box because my father made me a warrior, and that doesn't necessarily have to mean a bad thing, either! After, it became for pleasure, pride, and because it's in my blood. This sports made me the man I am.
James Brown became my father. He would talk to me the way a father talked to a son. He became the father I never had.
One of the things I learned from my father, and it did not serve me well at all, was that he was a successful writer, he earned a living. And it was a shock for me to find out that it was actually hard to make a living as a writer.
I always tell people that I became a writer not because I went to school but because my mother took me to the library. I wanted to become a writer so I could see my name in the card catalog.
At the point when I lost my father, it really made me want to be like a father and be like my father. It was a real turning point for me because it helped me mature - it made me think about being responsible because I wasn't the only one I had to think about.
Everyone who knew me as a child, they say they're not surprised that I became a writer because I wrote all the time. I don't remember writing, because I wouldn't have had the tools, but I think what they are saying is that I would pretend I was a writer.
I became a writer because I got addicted to story. The first storyteller in my life was my father.
Since my father was a superstar, without me knowing it, I became a child star, as my father's entire fan base liked me, and I can't thank my father enough for this, as it was so effortless.
I was not ambitious as a child. My father encouraged me to enter competitions and contests, which became very much part of my life. I was not the typical teenager. I was very closed, shy and didn't hangout with my friends at disco's. My parents wanted me at home. Singing became my life, I traveled a lot on the job, and my job became my dream.
Children are amazingly adaptable. What would be grotesquely abnormal became my normality in the prisoner of war camps. It became routine for me to line up three times a day to eat lousy food in a noisy mess hall. It became normal for me to go with my father to bathe in a mass shower.
Sometimes I wonder why I'm a novelist right now. There is no definite career reason why I became a writer. Something happened, and I became a writer. And now I'm a successful writer.
I say "on principle" [regarding 'lesbian writer'] because whenever you get one of your minority labels applied, like "Irish Writer," "Canadian Writer," "Woman Writer," "Lesbian Writer" - any of those categories - you always slightly wince because you're afraid that people will think that means you're only going to write about Canada or Ireland, you know.
I always credited my mother with inspiring me to be a writer because she was such a passionate reader. She read poetry to me as a child. But rather late in life, I've come to appreciate my father, the accountant. He was a solid, organized, get-the-job-done kind of person-and you need that piece of it to be a writer, too.
Part of my problem as a young writer was that I was too much a New Yorker, always second-guessing the 'market.' I became so discouraged that I decided to write something that would please me alone - that became my sole criterion. And that was when I wrote 'Forgetting Elena,' the first novel I got published.
Father's Day each year makes me grateful for what my father did for me. This has little to do with our relationship, and much to do with what he taught me.
My father never kissed me, hugged me or told me that he loved me. As my only living parent, he became the filter through which I saw myself, the possibilities for my life, the world and all men. He was a conflicted and dark filter.
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