Gerald Durrell Quotes

This show has been a major revitalization of my family life and personal life. It gave my family an avenue to speak to me honestly.

When you look at a family, if you have a family that never interacts with each other, never has strong conversation with each other, never has disagreements, nine times out of ten you have a very cold family and they're not going to be, at the end, they're not going to be close.

I think people love shows that are relationship-oriented. I think they love family shows.

'Frozen' definitely isn't about a man, but about the relationship between two sisters. At different times in our lives we find ourselves either more connected to or disconnected from the people in our family, and I think audiences will really be able to relate to that.

I always felt like there wasn't a blueprint for father-daughter relationships - for them or for us. Because what are they supposed to do with us, treat us like boys, or small women, or what? Father-daughter relationships are so unique from family to family, and I'd love to watch it explored more onstage.

I just wish I could understand my father.

Basic human contact - the meeting of eyes, the exchanging of words - is to the psyche what oxygen is to the brain. If you're feeling abandoned by the world, interact with anyone you can.

I'm making a movie about relationships, and I'm surrounded by guys scared of talking to girls.

One can never speak enough of the virtues, the dangers, the power of shared laughter.

I wish I had a great relationship with my mother.

I tell people with children still in the house to go out once a week and talk about anything but the children. Otherwise, once you are an empty nester you might have nothing to talk about.

I liked to be around my friends, but my dad was out there, day in and day out.

Mother, sister, daughter, wife, cousins - they are a part of your everyday life. You interact with them, communicate, altercate and that they would have an influence on your everyday life is obvious.

I think the one that resonates the most with a lot of people is from The Scream album - 'Father, Mother, Son.'

I can't imagine a world where I wouldn't have the means of expression. When I talk to people who don't, it seems like they're really unhappy.

My mother was a very quiet woman and people say that she didn't get much of a chance to talk because my grandmother and I talked so much.

I'm strange! I have a weird sense of humor! I look crazy!

When I get off the phone with my parents, usually I'm in a good spot.

Sometimes I dread loneliness more than bores. Other times, the reverse.

The other day my twelve-year-old says to me, I don't feel like I'm with you right now. You're in the car with me, you're checking your e-mail, you're not listening to me, I don't feel like I'm with you. And I say, You know what? That was your mother's gripe, too. And she was right. And you're also correct. When you cop to something, you get to the next level. In this case, the next level is: I just learned something from my twelve-year-old.

That's why I've never thought of retiring because I do it all the time whether on the stage or off. I found that in a precarious situation, a smile is the shortest distance between people. When one needs to reach out for sympathy or a link with people, what better way is there?

I once fell in love with a man only because we both belonged to that large and secret club of children who had "crazy mothers." We traded stories of the shameless houses to which we could never invite our friends.

I went to bed feeling melancholy, wishing I could have poured out all my fears and insecurities to my mom. Wasn’t that what normal mothers and daughters did?

People talked about being a parent, or being a mother or a father. We don't talk about "wiving" our husbands or "friending" our friends, or "childing" our parents. We just talk about being in a relationship with those people. You don't measure whether your marriage was good based on whether or not your husband is better now than he was 10 years ago, or whether your friend is richer than when they first became your friend. The relationships between parents and children is a kind of love, rather than a kind of work.

How many of the people I know - sons and daughters - have intricate abstract expressionist paintings of their mothers, created out of their own emotions, attitudes, hands. And how many have only Polaroid pictures of their fathers.