Marco Pierre White Quotes

In 2002, my husband died very suddenly. My main concern that day was how to deliver the news to our daughter, then eight. Someone put me in touch with Judith Wallerstein, an expert in child psychology who coached me through what to say.

My dad was a serious alcoholic, and ultimately, that's why he died. When you're a child of someone who struggled with things like that, you look for the common thread. Is there a pattern? Is there an inheritance of pathology in some way? That haunts me.

I think there is pressure on people to turn every negative into a positive, but we should be allowed to say, 'I went through something really strange and awful and it has altered me forever.'

I did not realize how broken I was until I saw how broken Mama was.

I didn't write about my mother much in the third year after she died. I was still trying to get my argument straight: When her friends or our relatives wondered why I was still so hard on her, I could really lay out the case for what it had been like to be raised by someone who had loathed herself, her husband, even her own name.

We need to ditch the idea that there is any value in the strong and silent man being in any way attractive. Being silent isn't being strong, it's being a victim.

My own father didn't talk a lot about feelings or emotions.

I was in World War II; I cried when they took me in the Navy. That's the last time I cried.

Most of me was glad when my mother died. She was a handful, but not in a cute, festive way. More in a life-threatening way, that had caused me a long time ago to give up all hope of ever feeling good about having had her as a mother.

My mother had early-onset Alzheimer's, and it took her four years to die. She was only 44; I was 14.

I don't think I've ever put it in words before. But daddy took a gun and ended his life and took momma's with him.

I had written two or three books before my husband noticed that in every one of them a family member was missing. He suggested that it was because my father's death, when I was five, utterly changed my world. I can only suppose he is right and that this is the reason I am drawn to a narrative where someone's life is changed by loss.

As a kid, all I thought about was death. But you can't tell your parents that.

In 2008, while the film version of my book 'Choke' was coming to market, my mother was diagnosed with lung cancer. That meant that I had to appear in public to promote a comedy about a son trying to save his dying mother - the plot of Choke - while privately I was caring for my own dying mother. It was torture.

The emotional stuff is the biggest challenge, for me to access that. As life passes, you encounter difficulties and tragedies, and so it becomes easier. 'Carnivale' required that of me, and it was really hard.

'Eyes Wide Open' took shape from two real life events straight from my own past. One was the sad suicide of my young nephew, a troubled kid, who was found at the bottom of a landmark cliff in central California. The second was a chance encounter forty years ago with none other than, ahem, Charles Manson!

I spent my whole life helping my mother carry around her psychic trunks like a bitter bellhop. So a great load was lifted when she died, and my life was much easier.

I think that when something happens when you're growing up, like a death or divorce, it does open the world slightly because things aren't as straightforward.

Last time I spoke to my mom she called me from a pay phone, and we didn't have the best talk. Ever since my stepdad passed away three years ago, she has been very depressed and hasn't been herself at all.

When I lost my dad, there was no one there to be the disciplinarian, and we kind of ran amok.

Boys do cry, but I don't think I shed a tear for a good chunk of my teenage years.

There's many, many people who have been through a lot worse things than I went through. I lost my dad when I was 14 and to violence.

Some families can experience terrible tragedy and deal with it, and others not. I find those things fascinating.

It's not good to lose your dad at any time but at 13 years of age you are just going through puberty and growing up and that was a very crucial time and was a hard time to lose my dad and it had a big effect on me.

Growing up without my parents by my side is a weight I still carry today.