Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I remember Nigel Martyn joking with me at Leeds, saying he was old enough to be my father, which he certainly was.
My father was a ham radio geek, and I remember the glow of the vacuum tubes from a Hammarlund receiver that became a hand-me-down to me.
I remember having mice in the house and my father taking some newspaper and beating me because mice was running on me while I was asleep.
I don't remember my father reading to me, but I remember him telling me bedtime stories. I got to pick what was in them, and then he'd make them up.
My father never played with me. I can remember my father picking me up - once. I can remember my father telling me behind a closed door that he loved me - once.
My father brought me a box of books once when I was about three and a half or four. I remember the carton they were in and the covers with illustrations by Newell C. Wyeth.
The first job I had was a Pampers commercial. And I used to go with my father whenever he would do a performance. I remember clinging to his legs, saying, 'Please. Take me with you.'
You have to remember that in the microcosm of Cincinnati, Ohio, through northern Kentucky, my father was a big star, still is. So that made my sister and me really visible. Everybody knew us, talked about us.
I remember being taken to visit houses by my father, who then tested my powers of observation by expecting me to describe the things I had seen... Unusual furniture always seemed easier to remember than other things.
I remember the bad times as a succession of painful emotional snapshots: Me walking into the library at 24 Sussex, seeing my mother in tears, and hearing her talk about leaving while my father stood facing her, stern and ashen.
Comedy chose me. I always had this urge to be silly that I couldn't control. I remember my father having me read 'The Three Little Pigs' to him, and I would improv all around the story, like when one pig's house got blown over, he put on his gym shoes and took off.
I grew up in a completely bookless household. It was my father's boast that he had never read a book from end to end. I don't remember any of his ladies being bookish. So I was entirely dependent on my schoolteachers for my early reading with the exception of 'The Wind in the Willows,' which a stepmother read to me when I was in hospital.