My father never talked about the sacrifices that the family made for me.

My father instilled in me to take care of my family. Show up even when you don't want to show up.

My father worked in a bank while my mother looked after my four brothers and me, the only girl in our family.

Irrespective of my father's support, if people don't like me there's nothing my family status can do about it.

I'm half Hawaiian and the haka is a very sacred thing, something your family teaches you - my father taught me.

My father was always clowning around. It was a huge influence on me. In my family, everything is turned into a joke.

My father left the family right after I was born, so my mother was working every single day to support me and my brothers.

My family is extremely supportive of me. My mother has been accompanying me to the shoots, and my father used to drive me around for auditions.

I was always the headstrong child in the family. My mother and father called me a rebel at 2 years old. But they always accepted me as an individual.

My father's family can be traced back to 1400. I've been told by gypsies that there is unmistakeably gypsy blood in me. Lee is a gypsy name, you know.

When I was somewhere between child and adult, my father left us. My first family broke apart, but this liberated me to create a new family as I pleased.

Everything outside doesn't matter when I'm on the court; it's just me and nothing else. Family problems, school, what happened to my father, all the stress goes away.

My father is always with me. But moving forward and making my father more proud of me is very important. Taking care of my family, as my father did, is even more important.

I looked up to my father when I was 7 and 8. I believed it was my calling to be in the big leagues. I'd been raised by a family that always told me I could do anything I wanted.

I'm from a family of teachers. My father would drown me in the bathtub if my daughter didn't graduate from college. I don't care who she is or what she does. Just get the diploma.

My father was a civil servant, so having a regular job, being respectable is a big deal for me. Respectable in the sense that I support my family. That's what I mean by respectability.

I come from an interracial family: My father is from Nigeria, and so he is African-American, and my mother is American and white, so I rarely see skin color. It's never an issue for me.

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.

Everybody in our family studied a musical instrument. My father was really big on that. Somehow I only took a year or two of piano lessons and I convinced my father to let me take dancing lessons.

My father's failures inspired me the most and still drive me. He worked for 10 years, but wasn't invited to award functions, forget being nominated. So winning even one trophy is a high for our family.

My father gave me an old Olympia portable when I was in fourth grade. Our ancestors came from Ireland. Our family stories of immigration helped me understand more about my characters in 'The Lemon Orchard.'

I grew up not really having a father figure, and it didn't bother me, because he wasn't there in the first place. But then he started other families, and I was jealous. It was like he was happy without our family.

One summer I was made housekeeper to my own family, making menus and shopping lists. It was my mother's idea of teaching me to be a grown-up. The main thing I remember is my father being so delighted to get roast duck.

'Catcher In The Rye' was my favorite book, honestly. I read it when I was thirteen, and the book was a bit of a family heirloom because it was passed down from my grandfather to my father to my older brother and then to me.

I was a Yankee fan in Brooklyn because my father was a Yankee fan. And my father was required to live in Brooklyn with my mother's family, who were all Dodger fans. So he was surrounded by Dodger fans. He was a Yankee fan. So his revenge was to make me a Yankee fan.

In the summer of 1952, when I was 30, the Army assigned me to an infantry unit fighting in Korea. Meanwhile, though, there was other news in my family: My father had become the Republican presidential nominee. As an ambitious young major, I refused any offers for other assignments.

Using the Africanist model, each generation should take the family name to a higher place. My father's folks were sharecroppers in South Carolina. He went to Harlem. They were still poor, but they moved up. If my parents didn't do this and offer me this background, I wouldn't be here.

When my mother died, it sort of put a damper on things. My career didn't have the same significance or excitement. It had always been about doing well for my family - my brothers, sisters, father, mother. Then something interesting and important happened - I started doing things for me.

My family background really only consists of my mother. She was a widow. My father died quite young; he must have been thirty-one. Then there was my twin brother and my sister. We had two aunts as well, my father's sisters. But the immediate family consisted of my mother, my brother, my sister, and me.

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