Alan Hovhaness Quotes

I have a son who's been raised Jewish because his mom is Jewish. I have a whole different set of holidays to celebrate. Everybody is thrown together with their family in such an intense way, opening all of that stuff again. You're cooped up with everybody and forced to exist with them, and you're forced to try to relate to them in this way that's more open. I guess that just doesn't work for a lot of people.

My family was pious and Presbyterian mainly because my grandfather was pious and Presbyterian, but that was more of an inherited intuition than an actual fact.

As everyone, you do end up becoming your mother, but also as you're acting, I find out you become every member of your family, bits come out without you really wanting them to come out.

You come from a happy family; you want to create a happy family.

I remember my dad came from Ireland and Scotland, and so he carried with him the fear of poverty. So when I wanted to break loose, it kind of made him very nervous.

My parents had an arranged marriage, as did so many other people when I was growing up. My father came and had a life in the United States one way and my mother had a different one, and I was very aware of those things. I continue to wonder about it, and I will continue to write about it.

I think we're all a lot more like our parents than we want to admit.

We don't really go in for big family dinners, but Scottish people are famously confrontational. It's a cultural thing, so maybe we don't need to have them to clear the air. Also, traditional family food isn't as nice here so there's no payoff for traveling hundreds of miles.

My dad doesn't watch 'Coronation Street.' But my mum is a massive fan. I'd like to think my dad will watch it for a few token episodes, as I'm in it.

I'm a strange mixture of my mother's curiosity; my father, who grew up the son of the manse in a Presbyterian family, who had a tremendous sense of duty and responsibility; and my mother's father, who was always in trouble with gambling debts.

We have three generations at home, including my father-in-law. I keep a very low profile, and a lot of things I do are very much with the family in mind. I have actually made films with the family around me.

Oddly enough, my grandfather probably had more of an influence on me than my father.

My father always wanted to be 'Col-bear.' He lived in the same town as his father, and his father didn't like the idea of the name with the French pronunciation. So my father said to us, 'Do what you want. You're not going to offend anybody.' And he was dead long before I made my decision.

My dad was really complex, and I was raised by that. My mom is really bright - very book bright - and so those things collide... I learned that I could put all of that stuff together in the world of acting, and I could make a dollar at it.

I grew up Catholic. My mother is from El Salvador, so my family on her side is Roman Catholic. My father is Protestant, and while he was spiritual, he wasn't much of a churchgoing person. I think it's fairly common for families to be brought up in the mother's religion.

My parents are proof that arranged marriages can work. It is a great part of my culture but I grew up in a completely different place, so I wouldn't want anyone to arrange a marriage for me.

If organizations like Westboro were universally bad, they wouldn't exist. There had to be some draw, and at Westboro, there was a lot of draw. The church was almost entirely made up of my extended family, and everyone in the church felt like family.

Each country has its own way of communicating a narrative and, through that, expressing family experiences in emotional stories.

I come from a magnetic field of Catholicism. I was baptised by my mother's family, who were all traditional Catholics. But my mother was the black sheep of the family - she ran away to the ballet at 17.

I was thinking about it: so many of my stories are about my family life, not about being related to a lot of famous people. That's my grandma, that's my mama, my daddy, my aunt, my uncle, my stepdaddy. I'd probably tell them even if they weren't well known.

The European family may well be anything but perfect.

On daughter Apple's accent: She says Mummy instead of Mommy, I don't mind that. I will if she starts saying basil and pasta the English way, as that really drives me nuts.

I have been trying all my life to like Scotchmen, and am obliged to desist from the experiment in despair.

I grew up in a very religious family, so that was never going to leave me. I just accepted it over the years. Although I'm not religious myself, it is so much a part of me. It's a part of my history, a part of my tradition and my culture, so I don't want to just throw it away and leave it behind, because it's made me who I am today.

Germany is different from France. You are more Protestant, which results in a significant difference. Through the church, through Catholicism, French society was structured vertically, from top to bottom. I am convinced that it has remained so until today.