Michael Che Quotes

I grew up in a family with two very strong women, my mother and my older sister, and they were big influences on my life.

I was really lucky to have been raised in this really powerful matriarchy where my dad was around, but I was with my mom and my grandma most of the time. They were heavy influences on me. My mother has a career in technology; my grandma sold real estate.

I grew up with two sisters, no brothers. There was Ronny who produced "Happy Days" for me and my sister Penny who acts, directs - she does everything. So they were very strong women in my life.

I was growing up in the suburbs; I was one of eight kids. So I did have a community when I was younger, but all of my brothers and sisters were older.

I'm used to very strong women because my mother was particularly strong, and my father was away all the time. My mother was a big part of bringing up three boys, so I was fully versed in the strength of a powerful woman, and accepted that as the status quo.

I grew up surrounded by these tough, ballsy, strong women. They were also adoring women, but they were the kind of women who would argue over what kind of pants you were wearing or the color of your nail polish.

My mother was a single mom, and most of the women I know are strong.

I grew up in a family where the women were just nuts. They didn't stand around in cardigans making polite conversation while they chopped tomatoes.

I have lived with extraordinary women, whether it was my grandmother, my mother. My father passed away when I was 16... I was witness to a woman who single handedly brought up the entire family and managed to do everything... She was an extraordinary role model for me.

I do like strong women in my movies. I have five sisters, so I've just grown up with that model.

I grew up with my two sisters and my mom, so it's my lot in life to be surrounded by women.

My mother and grandmother raised me. Queens raised me.

I grew up with six girls and one boy, so my innate instinct of who I am - I'm the third oldest, and I helped raise all of my younger sisters. I just fall into that aspect - that motherhood - naturally.

I have a twin brother, so I was around guys like a sister. It was comfortable to me.

I had grown up with four sisters.

My look and my character come from my experiences as a child. I wasn't allowed to have girl toys, and I grew up poor. I also had a rough relationship with my stepdad.

You don't forget where you came from. I came from nothing. I was in Marseille in a bad area. We didn't have anything. We were rich in love.

I grew up in St Louis, just with my mom.

I think women are strong, and they have never been weak.

I'm really interested in women, particularly the kind of black woman who has overcome obstacles in her life and transformed.

At a certain point the family moved to Jaipur, where no woman could avoid the doli or purdah. They kept her in the house from morning to night, either cooking or doing nothing. [My mother] hated doing nothing, she hated to cook. So she became pale and ill, and far from being concerned about her health, my grandfather said, 'Who's going to marry her now?' So my grandmother waited for my grandfather to go out, and then she dressed my mother as a man and let her go out riding with her brothers.

My mother was okay with me not playing it safe. She made an agreement with my father that I was going to be raised differently than my brother and sister were. My parents went through the whole sixties rebellion with my brother and sister. But I didn't feel like I had to rebel because I didn't have anyone telling me I couldn't do something. I never went into that parents-as-enemies stage.

[My mother] was the oldest of two sisters and two brothers, and she grew up with her brothers, who were about her age. She grew up, to the age of ten, like a wild colt, and then all of a sudden that was over. They had forced on her her 'woman's destiny' by saying, 'This isn't done, this isn't good, this isn't worthy of a lady.'

I'm seventy-five now. I also have the peculiar luck of having a sister and brother who are fourteen and sixteen years older than me. Their health is not good. It couldn't be at that age. But their spirits are. Both my brother and my sister are an example to me.

... my mother and father ... raised nine of us and taught each to do our best ... We tried.