Adrian Tomine Quotes

I play tough guys in movies and behaved like one in front of the press because I thought that was what a man did.

Every man plays many roles. So far, I have played father the best.

Before 'Lucky Louie,' nobody would ever cast me to play a mom or a wife; nobody ever saw me in that role, which is weird, since that's who I really am.

Guys are more apt to test me than they are to test a Charles Barkley. I think I have to go out and prove myself all the time, and that's fine, because I've had to prove myself my whole life.

I find when I'm perceived as male in society, there is an enormous amount of pressure, but it comes with respect, so it's a balance.

It would be weird enough just being in a band trying to date. It makes it harder being a parent. And it makes it really interesting when you're trans.

Naturally you want to be the best mom you can, but then also you want to be the best performer you can.

I wanted to start a family, but it wasn't something that I was going to take a break to do.

Everybody knows the competing identities of people who have kids.

I went home every night to New Jersey - or most nights - and to help with the six-grade math homework or to make breakfast in the morning, just to make sure that that was there. When I was single and didn't have children, I used to laugh at this notion of quality time.

I think men spend so much time passing for being men.

And I couldn't make fun of her for that dream. It was my dream, too. And Indian boys weren't supposed to dream like that. And white girls from small towns weren't supposed to dream big, either. We were supposed to be happy with our limitations. But there was no way Penelope and I were going to sit still. Nope, we both wanted to fly.

When I had kids I sort of went into a hole for a few years and I think when I came out of that, I started to really become myself and know what works on me.

One thing that prevents a man from being a good father is he hasn't completed being a boy.

Want him to be more of a man? Try being more of a woman!

Fathering is not something perfect men do, but something that perfects the man.

It is one thing to be a man's wife - quite another to be the mother of his children. In fact, once you become a mother, being a wife seems like a game you once played or a self-help book you were overly impressed with as a teenager that on second reading is puffy with common ideas. This was one of the many things I had learned since crossing over into the middle place - that sliver of time when childhood and parenthood overlap.

Before they're plumbers or writers or taxi drivers or unemployed or journalists, before everything else, men are men. Whether heterosexual or homosexual. The only difference is that some of them remind you of it as soon as you meet them, and others wait for a little while.

Raising children changes everything. It's a complete cliché to say that, but it's really true.

I'm a guy who should not have a lot of free time. But when it comes to vacation, I like to pull the plug completely. It's all about my daughter - I'm no longer the star of my own movie.

I don't think I've ever tried to be something that I'm not. People do that for you. People try to pigeonhole you. People tried typecasting me, before they even saw me in anything else. I've never understood that. I was like, "Why don't you wait until my next project, before you start telling my what my career is going to look like, for the next 10 years?" I've never let it set me back because I always knew the world would try to do that for me, anyway.

When you're a parent you find yourself looking at the unknown that is your child, trying to find a piece of yourself inside her, because sometimes that is what it takes to claim.

I have abandoned so many projects but in the '80s when I left public life to be married and have real children - I love my children and I would never sacrifice them for anything - I had to find a way to simultaneously be a mother and wife and fulfill my duties and still be true to myself as a writer.

If you put a label on yourself, people will pigeonhole you.

Trying to be a man is a waste of a woman?