Sonali Bendre Quotes

Having a child makes you strong and gives you chutzpah. It relaxed my attitude to the job; my center of focus shifted, which I think is very helpful, because even if you're not a very indulgent actor you spend a lot of time thinking about yourself. I don't think that is particularly healthy.

In interviews I gave early on in my career, I was quoted as saying it was possible to have it all: a dynamic job, marriage, and children. In some respects, I was a social adolescent.

Maybe it's just parenthood that puts you in a situation where you just have to develop a new attitude, I guess, about things.

Before we got married, I had tremendous ambition. Once we got married and I started having children, then I just thought that that was my real life. Steve was definitely more ambitious than I.

I got a very late start at fatherhood. I'm a late bloomer in general. It took me seven years to get through four years of college. I was five years away from 40 before I had a family, and I had never been around kids much at all. All of a sudden, I was around three boys all the time.

Once you're in charge of your job, your house, your children, getting the food on the table, doing all of this, all of the time, it'd be nice for someone else to be in charge for a bit maybe.

You have to prioritize what you stress about when you have a child.

I had years of partying, and I was kind of surprised and happy I survived it all. Now, being a parent, I look back on it thinking, Oh God, the things you did!

My political mission is as acute as ever. For me, in addition to kind of looking at the world and trying to engage in my society politically, having the kid around sort of makes me check in with myself. I think you're all busy trying to fix the world, but what about yourself?

So, I kind of rather was hoping that people thought it would have a nice mixture of different topics and it also takes in the fact that I've had two children recently.

Before you have children, you mostly think about the world in terms of yourself. And when you become a parent, the focus shifts to somebody else.

When I wrote 'Runaways,' I was a naive kid who thought that all parents were evil. Now that I'm a wise old man with children of my own, I am certain that all parents are evil.

Being a mother adds an enormous amount of stress to your life. You need to make sure you're there for everything.

Parenthood is so wild in its ability to put a mirror directly in your face and force you to look at yourself long and hard. What a challenge this is, but also what an exhilarating gift.

I think that once you become a parent, you cease to think of yourself as a hero or heroine.

A baby is such a huge change for everyone, so acknowledge that. It's hard, and you don't have to be great at everything right away.

Just because you become a parent doesn't mean you grew up.

Becoming a parent changed my life drastically and left me little time for leisure reading.

No one tells you how hard being a parent is! We could have had a warning! It is literally the hardest thing I've ever done but I'm loving it.

My advice for men who aren't yet parents is to make sure you're a happy person before having a baby.

Have a baby, and you realize: The second you think you got sh-t figured out, you don't. It's the greatest wake-up call.

I put my children first, but I always keep my obligations or my commitments. You really have to do some internal work to know yourself, know what you're capable of. See how many meetings you can take a day or how much work you can get through in a day. Give it lots of proper time and respect, but also give yourself the respect of having your downtime, whether that means yoga, pilates, a meditation class, or a cooking class.

Once you're a parent, male or female, every single thing that happens in your life is seen through the prism of being a parent.

I've given myself a bit more of a break in that I can't say yes to everything. I have to prioritize, and obviously it starts with your children. But I used to be much later on the list. I've started putting myself within a safe distance from that first priority. You just have to remind yourself to not forget about your relationship and to not forget about yourself. And it's interesting, because I have a very fraught relationship with working out.

I remember when I was maybe 27 years old and kind of at the height of my movie stardom - it was around the time of the Oscar and this and that. I think I was very much believing my own hype, which how could you not? I was sitting with my dad, feeling great about my life and everything that was happening, and he was like, "You know, you're getting a little weird...You're kind of an asshole." And I was like, "What the hell?" I was totally devastated. But it turned out to be basically the best thing that ever happened to me.