That always seemed to be the most critical test that a child was confronted with - loss of parents, loss of direction, loss of love. Can you live without a mother and a father?
Parents were invented to make children happy by giving them something to ignore.
This story is based on a gentleman who indeed did... used to come to my parents' house in 1971 from Bangladesh. He was at the University of Rhode Island. And I was four, four years old, at the time, and so I actually don't have any memories of this gentleman.
Thus the castle of each feudal chieftain became a school of chivalry, into which any noble youth, whose parents were from poverty unable to educate him to the art of war, was readily received.
When I was six years old, my parents told me that we were moving back home to Armenia. I didn't really understand what was happening. My father had stopped playing football, and he was at home all the time.
My mother was 45 when she had me, so when I was in high school my parents were the same age as my friends' grandparents.
My secret vice is Sudoku puzzles. Can't stop playing them. My parents are accountants. I blame them entirely.
In Europe the parents are included as with children. All three generations are together. I'm thinking of Italy. You go out on a Sunday afternoon and the whole family is there.
Teenagers blithely skip off to uncertain futures, while their parents sit weeping curbside in the Volvo, because the adolescent brain isn't yet formed enough to recognize and evaluate risk.
My parents never told me about Papa's lung cancer or the desperate nature of the operations he was about to undergo, which were a last-ditch effort to contain the spread of his cancer.
I always loved music. You know, my parents said I started singing when I was 4, in the car.
When I make a book, I make it for the child and not for the parent - no jokes in it for the parents!
I'm convinced that what kids need today are parents - not buddies. They need someone who will exercise mature judgment.
I don't see things the way my parents do. They can look at a tree and see something amazing, whereas I just see a tree. That's not to say I don't appreciate its beauty. When I watch the sea in somewhere like Sardinia, I see the beauty in that.
My parents certainly didn't have anything to do with the theater. I'm some kind of accident.
After my parents' divorce when I was 4, I spent weekends with my dad before we finally moved to California. By the time Sunday rolled around, I was incapable of enjoying the day's activities, of being in the moment, because I was already dreading the inevitable goodbye of Sunday evening.
I always performed when I was a child. My parents got very annoyed, because my brother and I had our little bedrooms upstairs, and I would plaster the house with posters with arrows pointing upstairs.
Thank God my parents had an abundance of patience.
If your parents never had children, chances are... neither will you.
A child who has never fantasized about having other parents is seriously lacking in imagination.
Self-belief? My parents gave it to me.
Luckily my parents were not against my ambition, they've always been very supportive. But they were adamant that I went to university first.
Most parents were, like, Little League coaches and all that. My dad was a wrestling fan. Instead of going out and playing home run derby with my old man, we just watched wrestling together.
My parents are wonderful, practical, sensible people, and the expectation was that I would study something academic.
My parents were never condescending to us. They treated us like adults from a very young age.
The young always have the same problem - how to rebel and conform at the same time. They have now solved this by defying their parents and copying one another.
When I was 14 years old, I was with my parents at a restaurant. Some people came in and said, 'Would you like to be a model?' I went to see them, and they said, 'You have to lose seven kilos.' I said, 'No, I want to eat French fries.'
We don't like what we don't know or understand. Parents don't like the thought of their kids embracing social media because they don't fully understand the benefits and dangers.
My heroes always are mostly my parents - my father especially, and my mom, who's passed on already. My dad is a very strong man, and by him being educated, and a principal and school superintendent over 37 years, he plays such a big role in my life.
When I got my first VP title at 26, my parents finally stopped asking when I was going to get my law degree.
Without greater support for childcare, parents of young children may be forced to choose cheaper, poor quality care for their children or fail to provide it entirely.
We had to be parents by long distance, which is far from satisfactory.
Parents should talk to their children, even when they are babies and can't talk back.
Parents are to be respected - it Is a commandment from God.
To be a winner of that, and to fall in the long line of traditional great backs at USC, to have your name in perpetuity, the fact that your parents are like icons... that's the greatest thing.
I grew up believing that my parents helped change the world. I was so in awe of them, and I wondered how I could measure up. I mean, how do you change the world - again?
