It seemed like most of the memories faded before they had time to form. And after a while, my life with my father seemed like a familiar story or a distant dream.
I called up and said, 'Dad, I won a MacArthur.' My father goes: 'I always thought your sister would win that,' and I said, 'Dad, just say congratulations and keep your private thoughts private.' At that point he laughed, then burst into tears, and it was obvious that he was so happy and proud.
It was a fairly happy childhood. My father was working away, and my mum brought up five kids all on her own.
My father's death from prostate cancer in 1993 was tragic. He never complained about pain. He was a fighter. By the time he was ready to die he wasn't able to die in the way that he wanted to, which seemed an outrage to me.
My mother is a huge fan of my work. I told her about 'Coraline' long before the film was made, and she got the book and read it. She reminded me that when I was about five years old, I used to sit in the kitchen for hours and talk about my 'other' family in Africa, my other mother and father. I had totally forgotten that.
Everyone loved my father. He was so nice that people took advantage of him. We were lower middle class. I slept in the hallway on a cot that rolled away during the day, and my younger brother and sister slept in my parents' room. My goal as a kid was to someday have my own room and to own a car - and I wanted to be able to take care of my parents.
My parents were very active in the Civil Rights Movement. My father was a Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) worker; my mother was a secretary with the Panthers.
I didn't get to college until my 20s, because I was a young father on welfare and had to take all kind of jobs to support my young son. There's what frames my view on the topics I discuss on my shows, and the average person relates to that. No matter how many degrees I have now, I lived that life, and that comes through to the people watching.
I was very lucky - it wasn't a question of being wealthy; my father was just extremely lucky with the couple of jobs he got. So we got a chance to travel when nobody else could travel.
As a father of two black sons now, you ask yourself, 'What do I have to do to assure the safety of these boys?' It can be daunting.
I wanted to take up music, so my father bought me a blunt instrument. He told me to knock myself out.
Since I was a small boy, I was always around the game. I don't play golf much myself, but I love watching it. My father has played golf all his life.
I have no ambitions at all! I have none... seriously. I want to be a good father. I want to be a good husband. I want to be a good son, a good brother, a good family member. I don't have any ambition to direct a film or write a play. I like acting.
'Swept Away' is one of my favorite films of my father. I've seen it about 20 times. It's a cult movie in Italy.
My mother was an actress in comedies. My father wrote scenarios. They were not opposed to my being an actor. I really didn't know what it meant, but I wanted to be one anyway.
The CIA created, armed and financed the Contras. My father backed them with everything he had. It was my father's war, and almost everyone in Nicaragua has lost somebody as a result of it. I couldn't go down there, being his daughter, and expect not to feel those people's wrath.
When I was born, my father was governor of Arkansas.
When I was a child, my father would read out loud to my brother, my mother, and me. Several times in the course of my childhood, he would read 'Alice and Wonderland' and 'Through the Looking Glass' over a few weeks. They were a great favorite with all of us.
To go to the synagogue with one's father on the Passover eve - is there in the world a greater pleasure than that? What is it worth to be dressed in new clothes from head to foot, and to show off before one's friends? Then the prayers themselves - the first Festival evening prayer and blessing.
Life is precious, and when someone dies it's an opportunity to realise how precious it is. My brother drowned when I was 17. He was 15. I think I grew from that. My father didn't. It really crushed him.
My father is the CEO, and there's no question he is my boss. But we work very much in tandem.
The new book is a result of my well-documented... absorption in Samurai movie culture. It's called 'The 47th Samurai: A Bob Lee Swagger novel,' and it takes Bob to Japan in search of the sword his father recovered on Iwo that has gone missing under extremely violent circumstances.
Mom and Dad were bibliophiles. Dad shared his father's love of westerns, Mom favored the likes of Zelazny and Heinlein, Howard and Burroughs. We owned several hundred books stored in trunks that comprised our portable library.
My father went to work every day, and it's my job to go to work, too. Some days will be good, some won't be so good, but I have to go to work.
When I was very young, my father had an accident. He fell down a flight of stairs, fractured his skull, and lost sight in one eye.
I'm no economist. I don't even play one on TV. I'm just a husband, a father, a taxpayer.
I understood the power of Heinz since I was a kid, and I started to work for my father selling food to restaurants.
My father is Chinese, Spanish, and Filipino; my mother is half-Irish and half-Japanese; Greek last name; born in Hawaii, raised in Germany.
My father is very Jean Valjean. He's what I would call a great example of a religious person. He is a deeply thoughtful man whose religion is in his deeds way more than anything else. It's not talked about that much.
When you're all singing together, it brings things together. I know the songs that my grandfather and my father sang.
I just owe almost everything to my father and it's passionately interesting for me that the things that I learned in a small town, in a very modest home, are just the things that I believe have won the election.
My father raced bikes. He gave me the passion very early. I had my first bike when I was three or four years old.
My father was a legendary copywriter. He wrote 'Timex Takes a Licking and Keeps on Ticking.' He named Earth Day 'Earth Day.' It falls on his birthday, April 22. Earth Day, birthday. So the idea came easily.
George W. Bush, though a president's son, is cast as Reagan's heir even more than his father's.
The Lord protects, guides, and watches over those who are His trusted friends in His work. His work and that of His Father and our Father is to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of the children of God. And Satan, the enemy of our happiness, opposes those who serve the Lord.
My father was a man who didn't consider himself learned. He was a man who liked to be a farmer. He enjoyed his dairy farm and felt the calling. So there was a dedication. I was dedicated as a child to the service of God, and so there was this continual centering of a greater purpose than your own.
