I wish either my father or my mother, or indeed both of them, as they were in duty both equally bound to it, had minded what they were about when they begot me.
All of them - my father, mother, step-mother, and grandmother - were all wonderful actors and performers and they are an inspiration to me, both in their craft and in their humanity.
Although both of us were raised on Oahu, in Honolulu, my mother has always had fond memories of Maui; this was, after all, where she and my father, then penniless yet oddly optimistic newlyweds, honeymooned in 1969.
I grew up in this Southern Baptist atmosphere, and my mother and father were both, I guess you would say, academics. They were both teachers.
I take after my mother more than my father in terms of personality. My mother's a worrier, and I'm a worrier. Both were very good with numbers and mathematics, so I kind of got that from both of them.
My father wasn't around when I was a kid, and I used to always say, 'Why me? Why don't I have a father? Why isn't he around? Why did he leave my mother?' But as I got older I looked deeper and thought, 'I don't know what my father was going through, but if he was around all the time, would I be who I am today?'
I belong to a highly religious family. Both my mother and father perform fasting, do shrads and completely believe in Ganpati. This has influenced me and that is why even I am so religious.
My mother - both my mother and father had very successful careers. My mother's an English professor and my father is a scientist and physician. They worked at the same jobs for their entire life, 50 years each.
My parents were both from extremely different backgrounds. My father's Italian, my mother was of Swedish descent. They're both first-generation Americans.
An alcoholic father, poverty, my own juvenile diabetes, the limited English my parents spoke - although my mother has become completely bilingual since. All these things intrude on what most people think of as happiness.
Both my father and mother were survivors of the Warsaw Ghetto and the Nazi concentration camps. Apart from my parents, every family member on both sides was exterminated by the Nazis.
My father and mother were both doctors, yes.
My parents were divorced when I was three, and both my father and mother moved back into the homes of their parents. I spent the school year with my mother, and the summers with my dad.
I grew up in the city. Both my mother and father were factory workers, and I loved the life in the 'metro.' Everybody saw me as a very urban guy. And I was.
My mother and father were both much more remarkable than any story of mine can make them. They seem to me just mythically wonderful.
When my father finally got around to teaching me to drive, he was impressed at my "natural" talent for driving, not knowing that I had already been secretly driving my mother's car around the neighborhood. When I took the test and got my license and my father gave me my own set of keys to the car one night at dinner, it was a major rite of passage for him and my mother. Their perception of me had changed and was formally acknowledged. For me the occasion meant a private sanction to do in public what I had already been doing in secret.