Quotes About Upbringing

I never picked up a guitar as a kid, partly because my dad didn't want the noise in our little back-to-back in Sheffield.

Growing up, we didn't have any money - we shopped where you picked your shoes out of a bin. When I was little, I said, 'When I grow up, I'm going to have nice shoes.'

First of all, I was a good Christian kid. My mom and dad taught me never to fight. So I never fought. The other kids picked that up right away. They said, 'Oh, he's not going to try to do anything.' They'd push me, shove me, hit me. I'd just stand there and take it.

I didn't think of football growing up. This wasn't my career, something I chose. It was something I was picked in.

My mother birthed three children and she adopted myself and another African-American son. My adoptive parents were Finnish. I grew up in a white picket neighborhood.

When I was 6, my mother put me on a picnic table in front of the whole family and told me to do my James Brown impression. I realized it was a great way of getting attention.

I grew up taking care of the pigs. I love this country that, you know, somebody can do something like that.

I grew up in a household that spent most of my childhood on a religious pilgrimage through American Christianity.

When I was growing up, I always liked playing football, and my mum always took me to football games. I owe her a lot. She was my pillar. She was the biggest influence on me.

I mean, I grew up with pretty down-to-earth, atheist parents, but I was born a Pisces.

When I say I saw shotguns and pistols in the house, I saw them. It was what I grew up around.

My dad was down the pit and my mother worked in a newsagent.

I grew up in a progressive household with a family that believed in equality for all, and that leaves its mark on you. In the past, I planned to go into politics and never considered Wall Street as an option.

I always felt that Jay Z, if he had a different upbringing, could be on Wall Street or in politics. If you really listen to Jay Z talk, he's kind of the smartest guy in the room.

When I was being brought up, we weren't allowed to wallow in self-pity, which was a thoroughly good thing. We were all fine and healthy because that was what we were told to be.

I grew up in a commissioned house in the next suburb over, Mount Abbot. It was a two-bedroom house with me, my brother, and my two sisters. Mum and Dad slept in the lounge, and we didn't have wallpaper.

Like the graduates of some notorious boot camp, my brothers and sisters and I look back with a sort of perverse glee at the rigors of our Catholicism. My oldest sister, Mary, was so convinced of the church's omnipotence that when she walked into a Protestant church with some high-school friends, she was sure its walls would crash down on her head.

Growing up, my generation would practise on concrete in the backstreets, using garage doors or the health-centre walls as goals. Taking on the older boys in the neighbourhood taught me to be humble, too.

My parents were working class folks. My dad was a bartender for most of his life, my mom was a maid and a cashier and a stock clerk at WalMart. We were not people of financial means in terms of significant financial means. I always told them, 'I didn't always have what I wanted. I always had what I needed.' My parents always provided that.

My mother was the total influence. My father was what we call a nomadic person; he was a wanderer.

I was a complete tomboy. I loved wandering out in storms or walking on the beaches in the dark. It was a very free upbringing, and I'm grateful to my parents for that.

The story that I wanna tell is pretty much about the way I grew up. Being bi-racial, growing up in a big city and being an artist.

I was born and brought up in South Mumbai. My father, Jagdeep, is a businessman and a Sindhi. My mother is half Brit and half Muslim. I am thus a cocktail of mixed blood. From the time I remember, I wanted to be an actress.

My father came from a very poor background, but I was very fortunate in the sense that we were never in need. My dad was determined to make sure that we didn't want for things. He wanted to give us more opportunity than he had, a better shot at a better life.