Ben Mendelsohn Quotes

I've cried over string arrangements.

My dad took me to my first movie. It was 'The Greatest Show on Earth' in 1952, a movie of such scale it was actually a traumatic experience.

The first memory I have in the world is of death and tears. That is how I would mark the beginning of my life: the way people mark the end of one. My family had gathered at Papa Joe's house because Mam' Grace was slipping away, only I didn't register it that way. For some reason I thought that it was her birthday.

Learning of my father's passing at age 55 not only shattered the world, far from home, that had become my reality, but catapulted my childhood and relationship with family - which had felt like another lifetime - into the present.

One day, I was at my grandmother's house, and I found diaries that she kept as a young girl. I opened one to a page that had flowers glued inside. In her childish handwriting, my grandmother wrote, 'Pap died today. I am very sad.' The fact that this was true and that I could see the withered flowers made a huge impression on me.

Childhood Is the Kingdom Where Nobody Dies.

Childhood feels so permanent, like it's the entire world, and then one day it's over and you're shoveling wet dirt onto your father's coffin, stunned at the impermanence of everything.

When I hear that whistle blowing, I hang my head and cry.

It's not the same without Jerry. It never will be.

I recall the night that President McKinley died. I was working at the time at a theatre in St. Louis. The oppressive feeling was in the air. I could not make the people laugh.

My mom died when I was 8.

My father died when I was 7. I was his favorite child, and he was my beloved father. I brought him along with me all through my life. Every elderly man has a bit of my father in him for me.

When my mother first passed away some time ago, I didn't enjoy food anymore. I just ate to live. My mother had always cooked so well that I didn't think I could follow her.

The first snowball I froze was put in my mother's deep freeze when I was in my early 20s.

I used to have a blankie, and when my mom had to wash it, I would sit outside the dryer and watch it go round and round, and cry.

My earliest memories are the best. I always try to remember the good times when Daddy was alive.

I've been writing about my boyhood, when I was a little kid back on my grandfather's farm where we didn't know about black widow spiders or all that stuff. But writing about that is so easy.

I just lost my best friend, I have been crying hysterical for a full day.

Dumbo... makes me cry. Every single time and in the exact same spot. I just have a special affection for Dumbo.

The song 'Some Other Time...' is full of emotion. In wartime, it had a tremendously poignant feeling.

My mom ending up passing away, and I got really depressed and didn't have money for therapy, and so I started doing standup to cope with my mom's death.

Losing my mom at such a young age had a profound effect on my life.

Well, I would have much preferred to have had a normal childhood. I would have loved it if my greatest dilemma, at 14, was whether to go to Benetton for my pullovers. I would have preferred not to have cried all the tears I have cried.

The first poem I ever wrote, about loss, when I was 5 years old, expressed the themes of everything I would ever write.

I feel I lost my innocence to cancer.