Andy Van Slyke Quotes

When I grew up, people said, 'You'll never be the man your dad was.' And I said, 'Gee, I hope not.'

Young men are obsessed with their dads, and they remain obsessed if the dad is not around. Remember that there was a lot of discussion about how George W. Bush might have invaded Iraq to atone for the failures of his dad.

It doesn't bother me whether I am or I'm not compared to my dad. I do not feel any pressure at all from being his son.

I'm the product of my parents' dreams and aspirations.

Someone once said that every man is trying to live up to his father's expectations or make up for their father's mistakes.

I missed my father so much when he died that writing about his life and mine was a way of bringing him back to life and getting me to sort of understand more about him and what made him the father, the husband and the man that he was, and how that made me the man, husband and father that I am.

My mother dreamed dreams for Joaquin and for me long before we could dream them for ourselves.

In my mid-20s, I was directing episodes of 'Alfred Hitchcock' and 'Peter Gunn.' I was pretty much on course and - as I sometimes joke - was prepared to devote my life to become the second best film director in my family.

My dad was an architect, and he wasn't a rich guy, but in our little world in Philadelphia, he was famous. He loved to see his picture in the paper. I wanted to be more famous than him.

I want my family to resemble the family I came from.

For me it was a normality having a father who was a world champion. I grew up with that, so it was never extra pressure. And I've never felt the need to emerge from his shadow.

People ask me from time to time what it was like growing up with Henry Fonda as my father. I say, Ever see Fort Apache? He was like Colonel Thursday.

I was very lucky in that my parents were very broad-minded. Because they had come from another country and hadn't been able to fulfill their dreams, they wanted me to be more of myself, if you know what I mean.

You don't get to pick your partners in families; you get assigned a seat at the table.

I'd been very certain about not wanting to do the acting thing because of my father. I thought I'd always have the father-son thing of 'He got you the part.'

You know my father as governor, as president, but I knew him as dad. I was so proud to have the Reagan name and to be Ronald Reagan's son.

It's a complex relationship when your dad happened to be president and you are president and then you have all the amateur psychology that goes on when people try to speculate about motivations.

I don't want to achieve less than my mum and dad.

I've written something like 17 novels, which isn't bad, I suppose, but my father wrote 120 books, my mother 40. In comparison, I'm lazy.

As awkward as it sounds. I'm not Shane Larkin, Barry Larkin's son, anymore. It's Barry Larkin, the father of Shane Larkin.

Even during my father's 1984 gubernatorial campaign, it was, 'Do you want to grow up and be governor one day?' 'No. I am four.'

I spent, whether consciously or unconsciously, most of my career trying to be something other than William F. Buckley's son.

People who knew Dad used to say at times I was brought up as the son Dad never had.

The more successful sons and daughters know when to lean on their parents - and when to go their own way. George W. Bush helped run his father's presidential campaigns in 1988 and 1992. But in his winning campaign for governor of Texas, he never mentioned his father's name in any of his campaign commercials.

I wasn't going off to New York to be more famous than my father, but in retrospect, that certainly was driving me. He was famous in Philadelphia, but it was also really important to him to be famous. And to a certain extent, I got some of that, even though there were parts of it that horrified me.