A Quote by Ben Miller

My enthusiasm for L.A. stems from my father, who was a lecturer in American literature at the University of Birmingham. Through his work, our family did several house swaps with L.A. families. It was a dreadfully daring thing to do in the early 1980s; there was no Internet, so you had no idea of what you were getting into.

Ben Miller

Quote Topics

American American Literature Birmingham Daring Did Early Enthusiasm Families Family Father Getting Had His House Idea Internet Lecturer Literature No Idea Our Our Family Several Stems Thing Through University Were Work

Quote Author

Ben Miller
English - Comedian
Born: February 24, 1966

When I first began visiting West Germany in the early 1980s, I was startled by the contrast between Birmingham, where I went to school, and affluent Cologne. My host family, the lovely Schumachers, always had an opulent array of grapes on the table; they were better dressed than anyone I knew in Britain.

Luke Harding

I went to university in the north of England at University of Birmingham to do an English literature degree, and I knew I could do extracurricular stuff with theater and drama. I started a theater company, called Article 19, and I did it with a bunch of friends. I wrote and directed plays. I had a radio show.

Tom Riley

The idea of having proper qualifications had been very much ingrained in me. My father had a steady job for the Potato Marketing Board, and the family emphasis was on getting to university.

Roger Taylor

Several millennia ago, the words were written that a man should leave his father and mother and cleave to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh. It was not our idea; it was God's idea.

Mike Pence

The most important difference between these early American families and our own is that early families constituted economic unitsin which all members, from young children on up, played important productive roles within the household. The prosperity of the whole family depended on how well husband, wife, and children could manage and cultivate the land. Children were essential to this family enterprise from age six or so until their twenties, when they left home.

Kenneth Keniston

My idea of success was to be a boy - possibly because my brothers, Leon and Arthur, were my father's pride and joy, whereas he had to be introduced to me several times before he got it firmly planted in his mind that I was part of the family.

Lucille Kallen

I had an older brother who was very interested in literature, so I had an early exposure to literature, and and theater. My father sometimes would work in musical comedies.

Francis Ford Coppola

In my class was an Annapolis graduate, several engineers, and most recent president of the University of Alabama.These were all small-town people who had good values. The families were tight. The schools reaffirmed the families and reaffirmed the church values that you were taught. I guess it was just one of those swell times to be a part of.

Jeff Sessions

My father did not live with us. When he came home, he never took off his shoes - he wouldn't be staying. My father had another family: Although my father had two homes, he paid for our education and household expenses.

Mahesh Bhatt

I came out of a culture in which my uncle, my father - they were all salesmen of one kind or another. My father was a manufacturer. He also, in effect, had to sell that stuff. And if he didn't literally do it, his men did. So, selling was in the air through my boyhood. The whole idea of successfully selling was very important.

Arthur Miller

Ronald Reagan rebuilt the American presidency; it was in trouble when he came into office as an institution, and he did through his communications and through his own inspiration, and his principles. I think he did lift our spirits about, and convince us that once again that the future of the best, our best days were always ahead of us.

David Gergen

In working class districts, you had several families living together in the one house, and it was very difficult to get a house, because the politicians who controlled housing were doing so in a very discriminatory fashion.

John Hume

I knew a guy who had $5 million and owned his house free and clear. But he wanted to make a bit more money to support his spending, so at the peak of the internet bubble he was selling puts on internet stocks. He lost all of his money and his house and now works in a restaurant. It's not a smart thing for the country to legalize gambling [in the stock market] and make it very accessible.

Charlie Munger

Why, on my mother's birthday, am I thinking about 'Father Knows Best?' At our house, mother knew best at least as often as father did, but then the title of the old sitcom, a homogenized portrait of American family life, was meant to be slightly sardonic.

Tom Shales

My father was a research doctor at the National Institutes of Health in the early 1980s, and you couldn't work in the field and not know about D. Carleton Gajdusek, who my father often mentioned.