I'm very inspired by him-it was my father who taught us that an immigrant must work twice as hard as anybody else, that he must never give up.
My mother was very strong. Once, she picked up a coconut and smashed it against my father's head. It taught me about women defending themselves and not collapsing in a heap.
I always loved my mother, felt loved, but she was judgmental. Her father in Ireland didn't approve of women generally, and she took on his values. She believed her own mother was foolish.
Fernanda Andrade and Daphne Zuniga are two beautiful, inspiring women I met and became very close with while living in L.A. Daphne's father is from Central America, and Fernanda is originally from Brazil.
A professional soldier understands that war means killing people, war means maiming people, war means families left without fathers and mothers.
I made 'Saving Private Ryan' for my father. He's the one who filled my head with war stories when I was growing up.
My father, who had lost a brother, fighting on the Austrian side in World War I, was a committed pacifist.
Now our founding fathers had the wisdom to know that social acceptance and popularity were fleeing, and that this country's principles needed to be rooted in strengths greater than the passions and the emotions of the times.
And so many things get lost. Not just a set of keys or a photograph of your father with his first truck, but the door those keys once opened, the childhood house you long ago walked into, the father who used to carry you on his shoulders high above t...
There has always been a sliver of panic in him, deeply buried, when it comes to his daughter: a fear that he is no good as a father, that he is doing everything wrong. That he never quite understood the rules. …There is pride, too, though–pride t...
Beds empty! No note! Car gone — could have crashed — out of my mind with worry — did you care? — never, as long as I’ve lived — you wait until your father gets home, we never had trouble like this from Bill or Charlie or Percy —" "Perfe...
Lance told me his father didn’t think much of him. “He wishes I was better. More better. At everything. I don’t do anything right, you know, Stevie. Nothing.” He said this matter-of-factly. He believed it as truth. Polly told me her father ne...
…how it would be nice if, for every sea waiting for us, there would be a river, for us. And someone -a father, a lover, someone- able to take us by the hand and find that river -imagine it, invent it- and put us on its stream, with the lightness of...
Not so on Man; him through their malice fall'n, Father of Mercy and Grace, thou didst not doom So strictly, but much more to pity incline: No sooner did thy dear and only Son Perceive thee purpos'd not to doom frail Man So strictly, but much more to ...
Did you know Grandfather would give the poems to me?” I ask. “We thought he might,” my mother says. “Why didn’t you stop him?” “We didn’t want to take away your choices,” my mother says. “But Grandfather never did tell me about th...
If we could celebrate our birthday on any day of the year, would you choose the one you were born on? I’d be a fool and a liar if I told you I didn’t want to celebrate my birthday on April 1st. And you know I’m no liar.
Tomorrow I was supposed to have a meeting with a salesperson, who happened to be Orafoura. But something came up, so I called him and said, “I’m sorry to tell you this, but I have to cancel tomorrow.” To which he replied, “Cancel tomorrow! Wh...
Did you know it takes more muscles to frown than it does to smile? I know, because yesterday was in a bad mood, and I guess I must have frowned too much because this morning I woke up with a torn groin muscle.
I think we should model parts of the English language after the Inuits, who have 52 words for snow. Why don't we have 52 words for love? Instead, I have to rely on metaphors like, Her love was as pure as yellow snow.
Your Kentuckian of the present day is a good illustration of the doctrine of transmitted instincts and peculiarities. His fathers were mighty hunters, - men who lived in the woods, and slept under the free, open heavens, with the stars to hold their ...
Ironically for someone who had so long asserted his own individuality as his first and best defense against insults of any kind, I discovered that faith in myself proved to be the least formidable strength I possessed when confronting alone organized...