Chris Rea Quotes

My mythic version of America is very much about parents and children, and in my experience, the suburban setting is where that particular drama plays out. Which isn't to say that there aren't parents and children in cities or on farms. I just don't know them.

I was born and raised in New York, but my family on both sides is of Italian descent.

When I was a kid, I resented my grandparents not speaking the perfect English I wanted to speak.

My father was the center of the family, and everyone tried to please him.

My parents didn't really understand too much about sport. At that time, we were in a Polish community in the inner city of Chicago, and I was the youngest of a bunch of cousins. Polish families are real big, with cousins and aunts and uncles.

Though my grandmother had picked up modern ideas in America, she still had some conflicting 19th-century Irish notions. She believed that daughters, educated though they may be, should continue to live at home until they were married.

My grandfather was a lot like a white Jewish George Jefferson, and he did not enjoy my work very much.

Coming from a large immigrant family, my parents didn't encourage a lot of 'play' when I was growing up. It was hard to get my Dad to even sit down to watch television with us (he'd watch it standing up, always ready to go do something more productive). Downtime was discouraged, as was any college degree that wasn't law, medicine or business.

I relate to 'Dangal' because of the way it presents the state's culture and how Haryanvi parents are. They might act strict, but will always motivate their children to do their best and will stand by them, always being emotionally connected to them.

I lived in Italy for quite a while and married an Italian woman. While there, I immersed myself in the complete culture: the music, art, literature, film, food, and history. It's easy to fall in love with. As a country, Italy does a good job of holding onto its rich traditions and culture. There's a real lack of embracing history in America.

My parents are super westernized. My mom listens to western music, my dad was like a pub landlord so he properly embraced English life. But the truth is they both came from tiny villages in Sri Lanka.

My nana was strict and didn't express a lot, so naturally, I was scared of him. I would even get the usual 'strict-father' scolding if I didn't study or stick to my curfew.

Growing up in an Italian family, we used our body to convey a message.

I was brought up to respect my father and not to love him.

How to Be an American Housewife is filled with dreams and love-the kinds that come true and those that don't. Margaret Dilloway is wise and ironic. She has created wonderful characters who never, in spite of hardships, stop finding ways to love each other.

You leave home, and then when you come back, you have a kind of perspective that you didn't have before that in some way problematizes your relationship with your family. You just start to be able to have a sort of double vision about them and who they are and how you grew up that can be really painful.

Asian-Americans, we're not a monolithic group. There might be some Asians who are second-generation, third-generation, who may not speak the language that their parents or their grandparents spoke.

There's a lot of material from my life in my books, but they're not really autobiographical, in the sense that they're not about my life. So, in 'A Feather on the Breath of God' I write about my parents, I write about this Russian immigrant, I write about the world of dance, but it isn't an autobiography; so much is left out.

All of the Arabic women I grew up listening to or watching had a very strong character.

Dani's family are great, and I'm really lucky to have them as in-laws. But it's definitely not all plain sailing. They are such big characters who aren't scared to speak their mind, and we have different points of view at times, so we have to work through that.

I'm Latin, and my family is originally from Italy, so we're a loud group. There's always a lot of food, a lot of talking, a lot of fighting.

When you're the foreigner and your kids are the natives, they realize you're clueless much sooner than they ordinarily would. I'm pretty sure mine skipped the Mommy-is-infallible stage entirely.

See, food I can talk about. I'm Italian, I know the food.

In my family, Father is the world champion at ending conversations.