Vidya Vox Quotes

My parents always wanted me to do music because they thought it was such a great extracurricular activity but we never thought it was going to be something that would be my career.

I'm from Nigerian descent, and the classic Nigerian mentality is 'Stay in school! You're going to be a doctor, you're going to be a lawyer.' That is what it is. Thankfully my parents knew my situation was different because I definitely didn't want to be a doctor, I definitely didn't want to be a lawyer.

As an African, there are certain professions your family want you to do or are willing to sign off. Being in the medical professional, as a doctor, pharmacist, a nurse, or being an engineer - those are the only professions allowed!

Being from a very traditional Chinese-American family, my parents believed the only options to have a successful life were to be a doctor, a lawyer, an engineer or a business person.

When your parents are Middle Eastern immigrants, you have three choices. You can become a doctor, a lawyer or an engineer.

He didn't want me to become a musician, he wanted me to be a doctor, because he said singing was too hard.

I was supposed to go to Northwestern and become a dental hygienist, get married, have babies. My father was very against me being in show business. Usually in Chinese culture, education is the most highly valued.

I remember that when I was little, my parents felt that I should study to become a teacher. They thought football was a waste of time and I'd never succeed at it.

When I was little, I thought about becoming a lawyer like my parents, and my mother would always tell me, "You can do anything you want - except be a lawyer."

There's a kind of a line between music and math, so I guess I got the music gene, thank goodness. But my mother wasn't too thrilled. She wanted me to go to university and get a degree or do something, and my father, he liked opera so he wasn't too thrilled either, because he wanted me to be an opera singer and I didn't have - as he said, I don't really have the strength to do that.

I think there's always an expectation when you're a first generation, especially a first-generation Nigerian, of sort of being a doctor or a lawyer or an engineer. And so, you know, sort of my initial pursuits into the arts and that I was going to pursue film as a career didn't confuse them, but it was definitely something that they were scared about.

My pursuit was more in the music thing, so I never went out pursuing movies. It was more just pursuing my singing career because people came to me for singing more than they did for doing movies.

My parents are desperate, they keep saying: 'Please stop doing these angsty roles; make it easier for us.' So, yeah, I'd love to do some comedy.

My mother wanted me to be a success. My father wanted me to be a gentleman. Neither wanted me to be a politician.

My parents come from that immigrant culture that places a lot of emphasis on doing well scholastically. Being a comedian or an actor is such an American thing. The Iranian culture is not about dreaming. It's about taking over your father's business, falling into line.

I always considered trying to make a living playing music. But it was always really clear to me, at the various stages in my life, that it really wasn't a possibility unless some phenomenal thing happened.

The reality is, because of access to film, you don't have a lot of black people who want to go behind the camera. We raise our children to want to be in front of the camera and shine, and that's on us.

Playing guitar was a calling, but I never realized that it was going to be a career. It was just something I did out of love.

When I went home at 20 to tell my parents, 'I don't want to be an engineer, I want to try and write books,' I was braced for, 'That's not gonna happen.' But I didn't get that response, and maybe it was because of my dad's experience of having an artistic dream and having to put it aside.

My parents never understood why I didn't want to be a doctor or lawyer. They're Cuban immigrants who wanted to give their children the American dream, and, to them, that was more of what 'the dream' entailed.

By that time - the early '70s - Vimal was a fairly successful textile brand. So everybody expected me to do textile engineering. I shocked them by saying that I would go to IIT.

All my life, I had loved music and been in choir, and I have a degree in music, but I never planned on doing it as a job. I had a realistic perspective on that. I thought maybe work at a church or be a teacher if you wanted to work in music.

My parents actively tried to discourage me from going into music - especially Dad, because of the troubled times he had in his youth.

I'm already popular in my city. I was just trying to get rich. Man, I'm not gonna lie to you; I didn't really want to go back to school. I mean, my family was mad about that. Because, you know, you tell your family you want to rap, and they look at you like you're crazy.

So many times, my mom would say, 'It's not too late to go law school.'