'Khalifa' is Arabic, it means successor, leader, shining light. My granddad is Muslim and he gave me that name.
I have my real name and RJ. I've gone by RJ since I was eight, but I was named Roy after my grandfather. They called me Little Roy, which sounded like Leroy with a Texas accent, but my mom didn't want to have a Leroy as a son, so it went to RJ.
I have four kids, seven grandkids, and four great-grandkids. Maybe I can become a great-great-grandfather if I hang on!
My father's father wrote for a Philadelphia newspaper and aspired to be a playwright. We had in our house a couple of crazy unproduced plays that he had written. For the one creative writing class I took in my life, I didn't do any writing - I decided that I would plagiarize his terrible play to not fail the class.
Like the grasses showing tender faces to each other, thus should we do, for this was the wish of the Grandfathers of the World.
When my first child was born in 1962, I wrote a letter to my grandfather telling him how happy I was but how concerned; concerned because there were so many visions which were not very good.
My father's grandfather was in Heart Mountain.
My grandfather served as a gunner aboard the U.S.S. Alabama in the Pacific theater during WWII.
The name America has definitely grown on me. I wish there was a big patriotic story behind it, but the truth is that my grandfather was a librarian who knew all sorts of random facts.
One of the stories that dominates our family literature was the fact that my maternal grandfather contracted for - I don't know under what terms - but, for a large section of the old slave plantation. He established himself - sisters and brothers, cousins, etc. on fifty- and sixty-acre plots.
His grandfather had often told him that he tried too hard to move trees when a wiser man would walk around them.
'Don't worry about senility', my grandfather used to say.
My father was always respectful to my grandfather. I really wanted that to be known because I never saw him disrespect my grandfather, and I never saw them have a cross word.
There was once an old sailor my grandfather knew, Who had so many things which he wanted to do That, whenever he thought it was time to begin, He couldn't because of the state he was in.
My grandfather read the 'John Carter of Mars' books to me when I was young.
My grandad was the most wonderful man. He was a bit like me. He was basically a country bumpkin but he did well; he became managing director of quite a successful company but all he really wanted to do was to come home, put his disgusting old trampy clothes on and go for walks across the country.
Grandfather informs me that is not possible.
I never talk much about my family, but my grandfather was friendly with these guys, with magicians and ventriloquists on the highest levels, and I was just... interested.
Edgar Allan Poe, I think he's a brilliant poet. I was actually given a copy of his work when I was, like, 8 years old that was my grandfather's, and I still carry it around with me.
My given name was Zahra, which is the 'flower of the desert.' I don't look anything like the flower of the desert. My name was changed by my grandfather to Iman, which means 'have faith.' And it meant to have faith that a daughter would come.
My grandfather is from Peshawar; he was born there.
My grandfather criticized me thousands of times, and he gave me a compliment once.
I don't want to do a biopic. If there was one biopic I would do, it would be about my grandfather, the late N. T. Rama Rao. But his aura and charisma is completely different, and I am no match for him.
My mother's father taught English literature. When I was about ten or eleven, I could recite Macaulay's 'Lays of Ancient Rome.' While other kids were playing pedestrian war games, I'd be Horatius keeping the bridge.
The first grown-up book that I read on my own was a nineteenth-century edition of 'Tales from Livy' that I'd found in my grandfather's library.
