Carl Lewis Quotes

Do not try to live your children's lives out of your own frustrations.

Yes, I'm very close to my family. And being that close to your family, I think you also struggle with how to become your own person.

To make the child in your own image is a capital crime, for your image is not worth repeating. The child knows this and you know it. Consequently you hate each other.

Many very strong fathers have turned out ineffectual sons by not allowing them to grow as men.

I want to be fulfilled in myself, rather than try to follow exactly in my father's footsteps.

My parents are very cool and wildly supportive - maybe almost too much. I want to tell them to chill out.

I think that parents grow up with an idea of what they want their kids to be like - and then their kids grow up to be people of themselves, of their own.

I don't want my own life to be solely about preserving my parents' lives.

Parenthood always involves recognizing your child as separate and different from you.

Children need parents who will let them grow up to be themselves, but parents often have personal agendas they try to impose on their children.

I think part of being a parent, to love one's child, is to accept them as they come - not to see them as instruments of our ambition or as creatures to be molded, as if they were themselves commodities.

I love my father, but I have worked to develop a separate and distinct identity in different projects I have worked on.

Being made to feel like an irrelevant child was probably an asset. Benign negligence is not a bad parental attitude or at least a cross between a benevolent dictator and benign negligence - you should just let kids crack on with it.

One of the things I would have loved to have had was a family that worked better together, although I love my mother and father to bits.

I don't live my life through my kids, nor do I expect them to live theirs through mine. But of course, they're everything.

A lot of times, you try and please your biological family, and you can't please them.

From their teenage years on, children are considerably more capable of causing parents unhappiness than bringing them happiness. That is one reason parents who rely on their children for happiness make both their children and themselves miserable.

I have a really supportive family, which is really wonderful, but I'm not forcing everyone to watch my work every week.

My childhood definitely revolved around my relationship with my brother. I wanted to be different. I wanted to find my way of being as intriguing and interesting as he was.

There was a point when I was 15 or 16 that I realized that my father wanted me to be a loner. I decided, 'It's okay to be an introvert, but I don't want to be a loner. I want a few other people in my life.'

My mom is not trying to live vicariously through me.

Children, a lot of times, can't make their parents wrong because they have to live with them, because they have to love them. And when you're young, you can't get on your Big Wheel and go down to the Best Western. You've got to live there and you've got to figure it out.

I know more than anyone the divergent views about my father. I want to be judged on my own merits.

You don't know your child until they get here; you don't know their personality.

Don't try to change anybody. And they should let you be yourself, 'You loved me when you met me, so let's keep going!'