Tony Scott Quotes

My dad is a lawyer and my mom is an artist. So growing up was exactly what it sounds like - strict household but a lot of creativity. They are so psyched that I get to make music for a living. My parents rule.

I was brought up on art. My father thought I had a great hand at art and sent me to art school. But he did not want me to become a photographer.

My dad was the baby. When he was born they were already successful. They sent him to business school - he probably would have loved to have been a poet or a writer or something, and he was very creative.

Since I stayed in a colony where either one was an engineer or a scientist, everybody thought I would be a scientist. This was the expectation everybody had apart from my parents. Honestly, I, too, wanted to be a scientist. I think it was the way Dad would explain us scientific theories and concepts that made the subject more intriguing.

My parents were intelligent and encouraging, but at the same time, they were displeased at me becoming a wandering troubadour and wire walker.

My family thought it was insanity for me to go into the theater rather than to get an education.

My dad is a football guy, not a music guy. He didn't totally understand when I decided to be a musician.

Much before I entered films, my dad walked into my room and saw me busy drawing something at 3 A.M. He stood there for some time and said, 'Whatever career choice you make, you are going to be successful.' I'll never forget those words. It gave me the confidence to be who I am today.

If I hadn't gone to dancing school, I would have married and had children like my mum and had a normal life.

I'd gotten the message in my home, starting with my grandfather, that real work, the kind that makes you sweat and gets your hands dirty, is a respectable, necessary thing. But I wanted to write - and writing didn't qualify. Whenever I told my parents I dreamed of becoming a writer, they said, 'Great, but what are you going to do for work?'

I think of my father and how confused he was by me. He understood my love for theater, and he understood that New York City was the only place that it was happening in America, really, in any live way.

Imagine my surprise when, after a lifetime of teaching me to keep personal things to myself, Mom insisted my drawings were the start of a comic strip for millions of people to enjoy.

My dad's an artist, and my grandfather paints - he's not a painter; my grandfather's a butcher - but he does a lot of crafts, stained glass, painting, that stuff. There is art in our family, and I was an art major in college along with being a theater major.

One day my dad would say, 'OK, if you want to play tennis I can help you out.' And that's how it started. And I had a goal. I wanted to beat my mom first. And my parents and my brother. And that was the ultimate goal.

My dad was not happy about my not becoming an architect like him.

Unlike my mother, who was unashamedly delighted when I decided to become an actor, I always feel that my father, had he lived longer, might have been a touch disapproving of some of my career - I think he might have tutted a bit at 'Men Behaving Badly.'

There isn't a dude outside my dad who had greater influence on my life.

I wanted to be a writer, and my mother was like, 'No, why don't you become a lawyer?' That sort of thing.

My parents have always advocated doing what I love to do.

When I finally began to publish, my father never read my work. He'd say, 'Oh, that's your mother's sort of thing.' But my mother found the books rather upsetting. I figure she read just enough to know that she didn't want to go there.

I was the only one to go to university, and the last thing my dad wanted was for me to be an artist. But later on, when I bought him a house in the south of Spain, he thought it was all right then.

The reason immigrants come to America is to provide their kids with opportunities, but when they say 'opportunity,' they mean a prestigious job and career. When I had the epiphany that I could do music and sustain myself, they were like, 'OK, son, we need to talk to you.'

I started publishing my comic while I was still living with my parents.

My parents made every effort to encourage me to pursue anything in life that I enjoyed or found appealing so that I would be able to better understand myself and my passions as I grew up.

My parents actively tried to discourage me from going into music - especially Dad, because of the troubled times he had in his youth.