Martin Amis Quotes

Growing up an only child with a single parent is probably why I'm an actor.

My mom and dad got divorced when I was very young, and growing up in a family where the head of the household wasn't a man made a big difference.

Most actors don't grow up with sweet, vanilla parents.

Womenfolk raised me, and I was full-grown before I knew I came from a broken home.

Actually, my parents were separated by the time I was about 2 years old.

And we're fortunate if we have parents who are great and loving and inspiring. But, unfortunately, there are people who don't have that.

My parents were divorced when I was young. I was really brought up by my mother's side of the family.

Divorce is, of course, difficult for a child. I didn't go through it as my parents stayed together, but I have a lot of friends who did.

My parents' marriage was already shaky when I came along. They split up when I was five, and I didn't see Dad all that often after that - four or five times a year.

My mother's feeling about men in general were always a bit of a mystery to me. She had difficulties in Puerto Rico with the men in her life. Her brothers abused her. It's very easy to be judgmental, but more often than not, there are mitigating circumstances, and children are not usually aware of those.

I can distinctly remember being the only boy in my class whose parents had separated.

Growing up, I did not have many friends with parents who were together.

My parents were divorced when I was 2, so I don't remember much about them being together.

I grew up in a very healthy nuclear family, and I was fortunate enough to not have to deal with loss and grief as a child.

There are two facts that all children need to disprove sooner or later; mother and father. If you go on believing in the fiction of your own parents, it is difficult to construct any narrative of your own.

It's my real name. My mother's name is Rose Rock. It was the worst name as a kid to have. They called me Piece of the Rock, Plymouth Rock, Joe Rockid, and Flintstones. Now they call me Mister Rock.

I am most anxious to give my own children enough love and understanding so that they won't grow up with an aching void in them--like you and I and Harold and Martha. That can never be filled, and one goes around all one's life trying, trying to make up for what one didn't get that was one's birthright, asking the wrong people for it.

I felt differently about her [Gypsy Rose Lee] during every phase of the research and writing process. Often, I felt incredibly sorry for her; she had an extremely difficult childhood and a complicated 'to say the least' relationship with her family, her mother especially.

My father had a tremendous influence on me, and I think many children who come from broken homes, esp. when they're very early. My dad left when I was 3 1/2, and he left my mom and I. It was something in order to empower myself.

A child embarrassed by his mother,” she said, “is just a child who hasn’t lived long enough.

And in the same way, FDR's not much of a father. Although the children in all their memoirs really talk about what a fun-loving guy Dad was, and how brooding and unhappy Mom was. The children sort of blame it all on the mother. Well, this is kind of standard and typical, and aggrieved Eleanor Roosevelt that she was not a happier mother. She wanted to be a happier mother. And I must say, she was a happier grandmother.

One of the things for me, as a biographer, that is so significant is for Eleanor Roosevelt - the child who never had a home of her own, who lives in her grandmother's home and then goes to school and then gets married and lives in her mother-in-law's homes, and then in public housing (like the White House and the State House) - housing becomes for Eleanor Roosevelt the most important issue.

His father was self-made, but his mother was constructed by others, and such edifices are notoriously fragile.

The thing with psychoanalysis is I know basically what happened in my childhood. I know where things went wrong and I know what my mother said at one point and what my father said at one point.

Sisters, while they are growing up, tend to be very rivalrous and as young mothers they are given to continual rivalrous comparisons of their several children. But once the children grow older, sisters draw closer together and often, in old age, they become each other's chosen and most happy companions. In addition to their shared memories of childhood and of their relationship to each other's children, they share memories of the same home, the same homemaking style, and the same small prejudices about housekeeping that carry the echoes of their mother's voice.