Govinda Quotes

I come from a blue-collar family. My father worked at the American Can Company as a mechanic. He broke his back and was disabled, and the first memory I have of him is in the hospital. My mother was a working mother - she had two jobs. Everybody in the house had to help out.

I was one of six children, brought up by my mother in Swindon after my father died. We had all we needed - food on the table, clothes to wear. When I wanted a drum kit, my mother got me one. When I got into playing guitar, I came down one Christmas or birthday and there was a guitar for me. It amazes me how Mum managed to do it.

My dad's side of the family was very poor while growing up, but my dadi raised three kids, got my dad through medical school, sent my uncle to America where he wanted to work and helped my aunt become an accountant, because that's what she wanted to do.

The stress and turmoil that my father had to go through at a young age to make sure that I didn't have the same trials and tribulations, I couldn't be more grateful.

For me, already being part of a single parent household and knowing it was just me and my mom, you'd would wake up times and hope that the next day you'd be able to be alongside your mother because she was out trying to make sure that I was taken care of. But all I cared about was her being home.

My dad worked all sorts of jobs when I was growing up and finally ended up as a surveyor; my mum delivers meals to old folk around where we live. We didn't have much money when I was growing up, but I had a very happy childhood.

I was raised in a house where my mom was the primary breadwinner. It was a dysfunctional house, but she showed tremendous resilience.

We were not rich by any means. My dad was a plasterer and worked long hours - I hardly ever saw him when I was growing up. He had always gone to work before I woke up, and usually, I would be in bed before he came home.

I'm raised by a single mom and didn't have pops around for the most part of my life. And she, by any means necessary, gave me the best opportunities that she knew how to give me.

We hear the stories every day now: the father who puts on a suit every morning and leaves the house so his daughter doesn't know he lost his job, the recent college grad facing up to the painful reality that the only door that's open to her after four years of study and a pile of debt is her parents'. These are the faces of the Obama economy.

My dad worked three jobs and was a teacher. My mother was a teacher's aid, making, like, $3 an hour. My father went on to get his master's and became active in all these minority engineering programs. And my mother started running for public office. All that happened after the kids were adults. But I'm insanely proud of them.

I grew up in a very open-minded family. My father died when I was very little, so my mother was really, really incredibly busy trying to provide for us.

I started doing radio commercials for Kmart when I was 4. They had to splice all my consonants together because I couldn't talk very well. But these jobs helped my mother and me put food on the table. It took the two of us working.

When I was growing up, we never had much money. My parents were divorced young, but I was always surrounded by loving individuals. They couldn't give us riches, but they gave us their stories, their hearts, and their time.

My father died when I was seven, leaving a widow and five sons, ranging in age from five to seventeen. My mother was the most highly-disciplined and hardest working person I have ever known, and this, combined with her love and gentleness, enabled her to make a success of each of her children.

Me personally, I'm real close to my mom. She raised me. It was a single-parent home situation. She did everything: cooked, worked two jobs, came home late, but she loved me to death.

I am grateful for the lessons I learned from my parents' sacrifices. They often had trouble making ends meet, so we moved for them to find work. I remember my mom would sometimes take on second jobs, like ironing, just so we could buy groceries.

My earliest memories were when my mom would put me in the plays that she was in because she couldn't afford a babysitter... she was part of this theater group.

My mom was my mother and father. My father lost his mind when I was about 4 years old. And my mom did everything she could to make sure that we was brought up right.

Egypt was tough without our parents. My brothers and sisters had to work day by day, and every time they collected a pay cheque, they brought it into the house and put it on the table. That's how we lived.

When I was growing up, my family was plagued by poverty. My mother, a single parent, worked around the clock to make sure her children - me, my five brothers, and three sisters - could eat and have a safe place to sleep. We hardly saw her.

During my elementary and middle school years, my mother made me and my siblings' lunches every single day - this was affordable for a Marine climbing the ranks and supporting a family of six.

My mother lost her job, so I left school to work full-time to support her.

My grandfather was a wealthy and respected merchant in Montclair, New Jersey, where I was born. But his estate was wiped out in the Great Depression, and as a result, I had what I consider the ideal upbringing: We were a proud family, good citizens, and we didn't have a sou.

I don't wish homelessness on anyone, especially when you come from where your parents work hard.