My overwhelming memory of being a child is the huge amount of love I felt for my mum. She was my everything, because she was both my mum and my dad.
We'd just go to church and sing. My dad would get me and my sister Doris, and we would sing together. I sung the harmony, and my sister Doris took the lead.
I'm quite dyslexic in school. My dad let me figure out what I wanted to do on my own. My parents never really lecture me.
Every morning, my dad would have me looking in the mirror and repeat, 'Today is going to be a great day; I can, and I will.'
I've never heard my dad say a bad word about anybody. He always keeps his emotions in check and is a true gentleman. I was taught that losing it was indulgent, a selfish act.
My dad passed away before my freshman year, and it altered how I thought. I was depressed - I didn't hang out with my friends. I worked through it by dancing.
I suppose anybody just losing it and sputtering curses is pretty funny. But I think it would be more of a challenge, much more of a challenge, to make a cursing dad funny.
I mean, my dad's a television producer, and I knew I could get a job as an assistant or a reader with one of his friends, but it wasn't exactly what I wanted to do.
When my first semester grades came out, my mom and dad told me I wouldn't be playing football.
When my dad first started out in the police force, wearing the uniform was a sense of pride, and it was respected in the community for what the police force was all about. Unfortunately today, the uniform is a target.
One of the greatest titles in the world is parent, and one of the biggest blessings in the world is to have parents to call mom and dad.
I was born and brought up in Liverpool with my clever little sister Jemma, who is 14 and wants to be a vet. My mum Jane is an administrator and my dad Peter is a taxi driver.
My dad had a flock of sheep, which he used to milk, and then my mum used to make cheese and yogurt out of the sheep's milk and sell it. It was kind of an unusual upbringing, really.
My dad never blew anything up, but he probably had friends who did. He and my mom have always preached that the pen is mightier than a Molotov cocktail.
I think my mom and dad knew from the very beginning that I was destined to go into public service.
My hat was pulled down and this girl said 'Are you really him?' I whispered 'Yeah, I'm really him.' She screamed, 'Mom! Dad! It's Heath Ledger!
My dad has sometimes felt that I grew up a little lacking in sufficient eccentricity - in the sense that I'm willing to live as an adult in a house with walls that are parallel to each other, that sort of thing.
I had to learn how to chop wood actually - I don't think my dad would have let me go chop wood in the backyard growing up.
Every dad who loves his daughter is not going to want her to go with the penniless slacker loser poet bum, when she could go out with someone who's successful.
My dad is a very good sounding board. He's very, very smart. Both of my parents are very, very sharp, much smarter than I, I'm happy to acknowledge.
My first outdoor cooking memories are full of erratic British summers, Dad swearing at a barbecue that he couldn't put together, and eventually eating charred sausages, feeling brilliant.
