Christine and the Queens Quotes

My parents always knew that I loved music. They just didn't think I'd try to make it a career. They thought I'd be a painter or an art teacher or something like that.

I remember that when I was little, my parents felt that I should study to become a teacher. They thought football was a waste of time and I'd never succeed at it.

My school friends thought I was outgoing and bubbly, but that masked a lot of insecurities, and maybe that's the reason I chose drama - to build a bit of self-confidence. I had a great teacher, and I won a few speech and drama competitions and just fell in love with it.

My parents are amazing, but when I was like, 'Well, I'm going to be an actress,' and they're all doctors, that wasn't the best and easiest thing to do. I'm sure that I probably went through a year period when I wasn't telling them exactly what I was doing. But that's going to evolve.

My mom was always keen I stayed in school and got good grades, and she was always keen for me to do medicine. I used to go to drama classes when I was younger, and she would always take me. But when I got to an age when I decided it was what I wanted to do, when she accepted it, she had actually been the most supportive person ever.

In school, all my teachers and my mum were super routing for me to study at Oxford. I picked music as a career choice, and this didn't sit too well with them!

My siblings, along with my parents Chris and Kath, are the reason that I am successful. Whether I wanted to become an elementary school teacher, enter and win Alternative Miss Ireland, enroll to do a Ph.D., or visit the White House to speak about fashion and disability, they supported me.

I always told my children that if they want to be pilot, go ahead and do it, or if they wanted to get into agriculture, I told them that I will support them. But when they chose music, you feel as if those birds have come back home to the nest.

I'm not sure what I want to do when I grow up, or if I'm sure I ever want to grow up. I'm sure there are people that wish I would, but you know, my mom will get over it.

My mother wanted me to be a teacher. She had this vision of me walking across the quadrangle in an Oxford college wearing my academic gown.

It don't make much difference what you study, so long as you don't like it.

I think my parents wanted me to be whatever I wanted to be. But I do remember them - when I first moved out to L.A. - sending me applications to grad school for teaching.

To know oneself is to study oneself in action with another person.

My father said writing was a nice hobby. He strongly encouraged my brother and me to become doctors.

Life changed at 40 for me, as predicted by my acting teacher when I was leaving college. I became more hirable and more interesting... I'm not sure why.

I decided at age 9, but I was reinforced at age 13 when a teacher told me I had talent. I can't say she really motivated me because I already knew. I knew I had talent. I went to the Jewish community theater and got in plays there. Then I went for the movies.'

For me, 'Rent' was all about coming out of myself, finding out who I was, learning the power I could have as a performer.

I call myself a teacher because they want me to call myself a teacher, but actually, what I'm doing is I'm studying.

You know, I'm still deciding what I'm going to be when I grow up.

I did a practical theatre degree, which I took seriously, and then told my parents I wanted to go into acting - because up until that point you could still say you were going to become a teacher. So I told my parents, and they said: 'But of course, that's what we always thought you were doing to do.' Until then, I was still in the acting closet.

I am sure it is one's duty as a teacher to try to show boys that no opinions, no tastes, no emotions are worth much unless they are one's own. I suffered acutely as a boy from the lack of being shown this.

As a teacher I realize that what one learns in school doesn't serve for very much at all, that the only thing one can really learn is self-understanding, and this is something that can't be taught.

I had a chance to go on the Supreme Court of the United States, and my whole family was more disappointed in my deciding not to do that than in my deciding not to run for president - much more.

I originally got into this because of a five-year-old's begrudgery of his teacher. Mrs. Lawlor cast me as a tree, and I was disgusted. I was sure I had more to offer than that. It was like, 'OK, if you want me to be set dressing, fine, I'll take it on the chin but I'll show you - I'm going to be a big actor some day.'

When I was 13, I won a scholarship to boarding school. My parents let me choose whether to go, and I decided I wanted to. Afterwards, I went to Cambridge to study law - in a way, I was carrying the academic hopes of my family, as Mum and Dad left school at 14.