I'm always interested to meet my friends' parents, or who they were raised by. Where they grew up, I always find very interesting.
My parents were terrific - mother was a church organist and my father was probably the most respected person in our church outside of the minister and sometimes maybe that much. The neighbors all called him - a gentleman.
There are a lot of ways to be expressive in life, but I wasn't good at some of them. Music, for instance. I was a distinct failure with the cello. Eventually, my parents sold the cello and bought a vacuum cleaner. The sound in our home improved.
I think in the case of my father, in terms of the things that influenced me, he never pressed me to go into academics or pressed me to go to a field, and indeed, my behavior was largely to move as far the other direction. I don't think that's uncommon with people with very successful parents.
God made and governs the world invisibly, and has commanded us to love and worship him and no other God; to honor our parents and masters, and love our neighbours as ourselves; and to be temperate, just, and peaceable, and to be merciful even to brute beasts.
My first encounter with video games was pretty conventional. I was travelling with my parents - we used to take long cross country trips in the United States every summer - and we went into a restaurant where there happened to be a Pong machine, and I was... a lot of quarters went into that Pong machine, let's just say.
My parents are left-wing, and I would describe myself as that. But also, you know what? I wouldn't describe myself as that. Because I don't have to. Because I'm not a political party. Most people are a little bit of each, and we change our mind on various issues.
To help the parents make the choice of which school to send their child to, I would insist that schools are graded on a simple basis that parents can understand, A through F. The way Florida is done.
I loved the stories my parents and grandparents would read to me.
My parents, Mary Agnes Smith and Rowland Smith, both had to work since their early teens, she in the holiday boarding house of her mother and he in his father's market garden in Marton Moss, a village on the south side of Blackpool, just north of Saint Anne's-on-Sea.
My parents loved classical music. And my father adored Mozart. But for some reason, I always had a reaction against it.
My parents were great at making sure I got out of bed when I needed to play football on a Sunday morning and that I was ready after school to go to training on a Tuesday and Thursday. But it was never forced upon me or rammed down my throat. If it had been, I could have ended up hating sport.
I never really told my parents that I wanted to be a pop star or anything. They just knew that I was totally obsessed with music. Funnily enough, my father always used to say that he didn't think I could sing.
Not long ago someone said I should shorten it to just Emma. But I really, really love my name. From as far as I can remember, my parents have taught me to be really proud of my name.
My parents' long and happy marriage was a great ideal to live up to, but a tough one.
My mom was a model. She met my dad when he was building the Ritz-Carlton in Colorado and she was modeling there. Although we were very blessed, my parents never wanted us to believe we didn't have to work. They didn't want us to think that our situation would get us through life.
I was inadvertently raised in the 'gay community.' I had straight parents, but I spent massive amounts of time at a very early age with gay, theater-hopeful thirty-somethings.
My mother never watched me train in Romania. She wasn't allowed, it just wasn't done back then. My training was paid for by the government. My parents were not at the Olympics with me, either. I never expected them to be.
Both of my parents are actors, so I grew up backstage with them. I would see some of their shows 30, 40, 50 times. I would have it all memorized. I loved it.
My parents always used to tell us not to complain about things but do something about them, so 'Can't is not an option' was almost a way of life.
My parents were overprotective because you could get kidnapped and bombs were exploding in the streets.
If the parents are too busy to read, it's a safe bet the children will feel the same way. Set aside time for family reading each night. It doesn't matter so much what the kids read, as long as you provide them space for reading and a sense that it is a valuable part of your daily routine.
Acting advice is a bit like your parents teaching you how to drive a car. You know they're right, but you still kind of want them to shut up a bit.
My father was very energetic; my mother was very energetic. He lived to a very old age, and so did my mother. I believe that I just have it from my father, from my parents. They had wonderful energy.
My parents had us in church every Sunday, every Wednesday. It was more of a tradition at that point; I didn't have a personal relationship with the Lord until I went to the altar call one Sunday, and the youth pastor told us to make a decision for ourselves.
To my parents, writing seemed precarious and not the best idea.
Prince Charles is an absolute Mountbatten. The real intelligence in the royal family comes through my parents to Prince Philip and the children.
I still miss my parents every day; I adored them. And when you have no children, friends are even more important to you.
If you have two parents who have to work, who want to work, you need to have someone to guide your child.
My parents always knew that I loved music. They just didn't think I'd try to make it a career. They thought I'd be a painter or an art teacher or something like that.
One of the things that I really like about young adult fiction is that you can explore the relationships between teens and their parents. I definitely think that teens are a product of their parents. You either end up just like them or you consciously make the decision to be unlike them.
Many working mothers feel guilty about not being at home. And when they are there, they wish it could be perfect. This pressure to make every minute happy puts working parents in a bind when it comes to setting limits and modifying behavior.
My experience, with both my parents, is that grief has a lot of down, sad things, but I was also really emotionally raw, in the first year after each of them passed. Flowers smelled more intensely, my relationships were hotter, and I was more willing to risk. I was going for it a lot more. I was 'unsober' and I wasn't playing by my rules.
I was brought up in a way that when you're at a dinner party, you don't grab a chip unless it's been offered to everyone else. It's the manners of being brought up by English parents.
It's easy to blame the nature-deficit disorder on the kids' or the parents' back, but they also need the help of urban planners, schools, libraries and other community agents to find nature that's accessible.
Although my family - parents and sister - all work in the personnel management business, their real passion is performing, amateur operatic societies and so on.
