Robert Gottlieb Quotes

I once asked my father what he wanted me to be. To my horror, he said, 'sociologist.'

My mum thought my TV and film addiction was laziness. If you're an immigrant, you know you'll never be an accepted part of society, but you hope your children will be, and you try to make them essential to the community in a practical way - being a doctor or a lawyer. Acting was beyond their comprehension.

And I finished college because I thought how much it would upset my parents if I didn't.

My mom says: 'Why aren't you a doctor?' and I'm like, 'I am a doctor!' and she's all, 'No, I mean a real doctor.' She reads my books, but she says they give her a headache.

My parents would have loved it if my brother or I had become a doctor or lawyer.

He didn't want me to become a musician, he wanted me to be a doctor, because he said singing was too hard.

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.'

My parents owned a pharmacy in Budapest, which gave us a comfortable living. As I was their only child, they wanted me to become a pharmacist. But my own preference would have been to study philosophy and mathematics.

My mother wanted me to be a success. My father wanted me to be a gentleman. Neither wanted me to be a politician.

Like every father who wants his son to be either an engineer or a doctor, my father wanted me to become a doctor. I never did.

My father wanted to be an actor, dreamed about being an actor, but he gave it up because my mom and his family told him, "You're never going to make it; it's too tough out there."

Every culture feels like their parents are the most stringent as far as, "We came to this country to work hard, we want you to be a doctor or a lawyer."

I always wanted to be acting but...my parents (who are Cambodian) wanted me to be something else with more stability, like a doctor or lawyer. My heart wasn't in that and I'm really glad I followed my heart.

When you're an only child, you get very used to pleasing the adults around you.

It was always acting for me, since I was about 15. My middle brother always wanted to be a news anchor, so we always felt that he'd be the one to take over for dad, so we could go and do our thing.

If the kids did want to get into showbiz then so be it, but I would never project anything on to my children.

Dad and mom would have preferred that I be a doctor, a lawyer, a scientist, or a great humanitarian.

I think in the case of my father, in terms of the things that influenced me, he never pressed me to go into academics or pressed me to go to a field, and indeed, my behavior was largely to move as far the other direction. I don't think that's uncommon with people with very successful parents.

My parents are not shy, clearly publicly and otherwise, in expressing their hopes that they will soon be grandparents.

I guess what really forms you as a person is what you do within your family to receive love or attention. In my family, what you had to do to receive attention was to have good conversation at the dinner table or for me to do well at school, and those were really my focuses because that was what was valued the most.

My parents are desperate, they keep saying: 'Please stop doing these angsty roles; make it easier for us.' So, yeah, I'd love to do some comedy.

My parents didn't want me to go into show business. They were afraid of what would happen if I didn't succeed. They wanted me to get married and have babies. I never saw marriage and family in my life.

My parents thought they were getting an accountant and a lawyer. Instead, they ended up with a PR and an actress.

Brodsky was born in May, 1940, a year before the German invasion. His mother worked as an accountant; his father was a photographer and worked for the Navy Museum in Leningrad when Brodsky was young. They were doting parents and much beloved by Iosif Brodsky, who was their only child.

I went to Brooklyn College as an education major. It was a big deal in the family, but really, I was living for Mom and Dad.