Neil Sedaka Quotes

Even when I was little and going on auditions, it was clear who was there because they wanted to be there, and who was there because their stage parents were making them be there. There was a major difference.

My mother always wanted to play an instrument. Her parents never gave her that. Then it got to a point where I'd been playing for 18 years, and to give it up would make me feel guilty. But my parents also knew that realistically, I wasn't going to become a concert pianist.

Well, since I'm six years old, I've been playing the violin, the piano, I've been singing. It's always been a dream of mine, but I really never had the courage to actually go and do it professionally.

I knew when I was a kid that I had a Broadway voice. I wanted to be a rocker, because I grew up in that era of transistor radios at the beach.

When I was a kid, I wanted to walk with my dad's limp - my dad was my hero - but that infuriated him, and he would make me walk back and forth in the living room until I walked without it.

I hate the cliche of 'just have fun,' but what I've seen in today's sports, especially with parents, is they put so much pressure on the kids.

It's hard when your father's the coach. Sometimes you don't know where one leaves off and the other begins.

When I was young, it was difficult to imagine entering a world where my parents succeeded so much and I could have risked failing. It would have felt much harder.

Countries are either mothers or fathers, and engender the emotional bristle secretly reserved for either sire.

We've always wanted to do it, something you could dance to, and deep down we always thought we could bring something to the table if we could do it, but the live shows always made us pull back and be a rock band.

My ambition when I started out was to play two or three gigs a week. And that's what I'm doing.

My dad, coming from a very traditional family, always wanted me to be a doctor. So he would always ask me, 'What are you going to be when you grow up?' And I'd have to say 'Dr. Chen.'

When I was little, my parents really only wanted me to be a scientist or a doctor; they had never even heard of law school. I think even these days if you were to tell your mother you want to be a fashion designer, or an artist or a writer, a lot of Asian parents would be alarmed because they don't think that's a secure career.

When I auditioned for my high school band the band director was excited because my father was known to be a great musician. When he heard me, he said 'Are you sure you're Ellis's son?'

I've always known from the time I was eight years old what I wanted to do. I would have been fairly content to be someone's lead guitar player.

My mother wanted me to be a concert pianist.

Listen, everything I did in my childhood was competitive. Everything we did my dad made it into a game to win. We used to drive my mum nuts.

I remember I always felt much more safe standing up on a chair and singing in front of my mother than I was in front of my father!

Dad was convinced always that I was going to be a road sweeper.

My parents wanted me to be a lawyer.

It gets to you as a father when your kids don't react to you in the way you imagine.

I went to Hebrew school but opted out of a bar mitzvah.

It was not a secret, then or now, that there is something vaguely un-American about forcing your child to be really good at classical music performance.

I used to sing all the time. But I couldn't imagine getting paid for it.

My parents - Augustine Joseph and Elizabeth - discovered my talent for singing when I was a kid. I remember them telling me that I sang a classical piece after listening to it a couple of times when I was two-and-a-half years old.