You must be ready to give up everything, not only material attachments but also human attachments - father, mother, wife, children - everything that you have. But the one thing which you have to abandon unconditionally is your self.
My father realised that for me to become a publisher in his firm would have been the end of the firm!
I've heard my father say that the man is to be the priest, the provider, and the protector of his family. He's the priest because he is the spiritual leader, monitoring and growing the spiritual temperature of his family.
My parents were definitely on the incentive side of parenting. Like, they told me that my father had learned to read when he was three. So, of course, I thought I had to, too.
I've been fascinated with technology since I was a boy banging around on my father's adding machine. Back then I'd type in an equation, the device made some cool noises, and out came my answer. I was hooked.
The public saw my father right out of central casting. He looked the part, acted the part... he was the part! The real life Godfather.
I had a fairly enlightened dad, though if you looked at his resume, it might not seem that way. He was a chartered accountant for Price Waterhouse. He was strict, and we had a very ordered life. To this day, I am the least materialistic person I know, because my father didn't raise me to just go out and buy this or that car.
George Burns was the father I never had.
Throughout my life, I have talked to Heavenly Father regularly through prayer. I am very grateful to my parents for teaching me that Heavenly Father lives and that He always listens to us. He listens to me, and He listens to you. I know that He will always be there for you.
I realize that when I moved out of my father's house I shocked and frightened him because I needed a room of my own, a space of my own to reinvent myself.
You want a lesson? I'll give you a lesson. How about a geography lesson? My father's from Puerto Rico. My mother's from El Salvador. And neither one of those is Mexico.
I don't think children's inner feelings have changed. They still want a mother and father in the very same house; they want places to play.
My mother was born in your state, Mr. Walter, and my mother was a Quaker, and my ancestors in the time of Washington baked bread for George Washington's troops when they crossed the Delaware, and my own father was a slave.
My father was never around, and my mother used to worry that the kids won't grow up to be connected to him.
The founding father of Albanian literature is the nineteenth-century writer Naim Frasheri. Without having the greatness of Dante or Shakespeare, he is nonetheless the founder, the emblematic character. He wrote long epic poems, as well as lyrical poetry, to awaken the national consciousness of Albania.
I've always stayed really close with my mother and my father.
The highest duty of the man is not to his father, but to his wife; and for the sake of that woman he abandons all other earthly ties, should any of these happen to interfere with that relation.
Oh, that all the things my father had told me about how disgusting Washington is are true. And again it's the system - there are lots of nice, well-meaning people there. But it's a sleazy place. And politics is all about doing favors.
Do you know that other than my father, I've never had a man take care of me?
I first learned that there were black people living in some place called other than the United States in the western hemisphere when I was a very little boy, and my father told me that when he was a boy about my age, he wanted to be an Episcopal priest, because he so admired his priest, a black man from someplace called Haiti.
I am a father. My son's name is Max and my daughter's name is Billie Grace. Twelve years ago Max was born with Down Syndrome. His journey has been complicated by infantile seizures, sleep apnea, dietary challenges and now, puberty!
I want to work with a director who becomes my brother, my father, for two months. You give yourself over to that person.
There's inevitably something missing when you grow up in this kind of an environment when your parents travel a lot. When your father is famous, you are looked at and expected of. There are standards you need to meet.
I got a note from my father, who said that Success is wonderful, if you don't inhale. That was his own aphorism, and I think it's the very best thing he could have said to me or anyone else on the subject.
I didn't have my own journals, but my mother kept a journal while I was in the hospital, and my father wrote newsletters to keep friends and family updated on my progress.
I have no regrets. I wanted to raise the kids and be a present father. When I developed a movie, I was gone for a year. That didn't really work for me. That isn't fair to make these life-forms and then disappear.
I've always loved history, from my youngest memories. My father enjoyed the great stories of history, like Hereward the Wake, Robin Hood, and Richard the Lionheart, and he shared them with me. I went on to do a degree in history, though I found it rather dry, because it was mostly about politics rather than dashing individuals!
My father also happened to be an intellectual, as learned, literate, informed, and curious as anyone I have known. Unobtrusively and casually, he was my wise and gentle teacher.
It's a little bit in the genes because my brother is a journalist and my father was a sports writer.
I was a hostess in a restaurant in New York when I was 21, and I was too good of an employee. I was putting most of my energy into that instead of acting. But my father told my sister and me to look at whatever needed to be done and do that job well, no matter what it was.
My father once said something very shrewd about me to a woman journalist who had told him how courageous she thought I was for always speaking my mind. My father said, 'If you couldn't care less what anyone says about you, then it's not courage.'
I don't really believe in the Devil, but if the Devil is the Father of Lies, then he certainly invented the Internet.
My parents always swore that in my childhood they had to let me win at board games. If, by the lucky stroke of the plastic wheel, my father would accidentally beat me at Candy Land, I would fly into fits of bawling that I'm told would last for hours. If I couldn't triumph, I didn't want to play.
Perhaps because my relationship with my father went through such a long, bumpy time, it's been very important for me to work to try to keep lines of communication open between my sons and myself to try to avoid my father's mistakes. At least if you're making mistakes, make different mistakes.
I really cite Walt Disney as teaching me everything I know. It sounds crazy, but I'm serious! In 'Bambi,' the mother dies, but you don't see the corpse. You see the father, the stag, come up and you see 'Bambi' alone, and that has so much more impact than seeing a mutilated deer.
I have a 92 year old father whose doing beautifully who lives in Chicago and a sister and a nephew and a niece and I love coming back and try to do so fairly often.
