Quotes About Upbringing

I was very much a product of the public-school system. There was only one other kid in my class who had parents not involved in the stock market or law.

I'm grateful I grew up in Stockholm.

My father and mother - I figured if I could make them laugh, they'd stop fighting. I stole all their material.

If you've grown up with guns, the thought that someone might take them away makes your stomach churn. They make you feel safe. If you didn't grow up with guns, if you don't know how to use them, then the thought that someone else has them makes your stomach churn.

I grew up under the sticks and stones rule. I didn't put my hands on you so why should you put your hands on me or my family.

I was brought up with beautiful music - Nat King Cole and Glen Miller from my dad, and my mum loved Judy Garland and Doris Day - brilliant stuff. Through my brothers and sisters I heard David Bowie and The Specials, The Carpenters, Meatloaf and The Rolling Stones.

I've always loved music. I grew up with older brothers and sisters who were into music, played The Beatles and the Rolling Stones and Aretha Franklin.

My mother says I was two-and-a-half when I started playing. My father was a minister, and when he went to church in the morning, she would put on Fats Waller, Billie Holiday, Nat King Cole and Cole Porter records. I'd crawl up on the piano stool, sit on a phone book and play.

I grew up cursing a lot. It felt natural. My parents told me to stop.

My mother was an awful cook, an exceptionally awful kosher cook, but I stayed kosher until I got to college, even though I'd long stopped believing in God.

I grew up in a French-dominated Catholic part of the country. I was an altar boy. I went to Catholic school. I have a cousin who is a priest - it's part of my DNA. It's kind of hard to separate me from the church, to try to say where one starts and the other stops.

When I was quite young, she was working in a hardware store, so I grew up knowing about hardware.

I was born in Chicago in 1927, the only child of Morris and Mildred Markowitz, who owned a small grocery store. We lived in a nice apartment, always had enough to eat, and I had my own room. I never was aware of the Great Depression.

I grew up in rural Arizona. My dad ran a general store.

I was raised by my grandparents, who had a little general store. My grandmother, Marion Dunham Bowman, was a graduate of Albany Law School. Although she never did practice law, she kept the house filled with books. It's because of her that I was always reading.

The goal for my girls and me has always been about beauty and fashion. Before we ever had the shows, my mom had a store for 40 years in La Jolla, and I grew up working there.

I was spoiled growing up. My dad would really spoil us. He would bring us to high-end stores and ask us to please try on those clothes. He'd make us try on all the pretty clothes, modeling like that... He liked dressing us up, my dad and my mom they loved dressing up.

My dad was a produce man. He worked in grocery stores for 35 years. My mom just babysat kids and raised us. I have four sisters and one brother. I'm the baby.

I don't want to tell sad stories about myself. We may not have had a lot to spend when I grew up, but my childhood was good. The public likes to hear a dramatic story. They want a star to rise, have a meltdown and then return to greatness. Very American.

I was never taken to a play or concert or church. Yet I was a show-off, a dreamer, a storyteller.

I come from a big family of storytellers and, growing up, I liked hearing about the years before I was born.

My dad was ex-military, so I was raised to always know about current events, particularly what was going on with the military and government. And I always loved storytelling.

I didn't leave home until 27. I was an only child raised in Philadelphia by my mother and grandmother. My grandmother controlled the stove. She made a lot of potato meals - mashed potato, potato souffle, potato pancakes. When we didn't have electricity, we ate romantically by candlelight.

Like a lot of black people, I grew up straight po'. Wasn't no question about whether we was po', either. If you really wanted to know, all you had to do was look in our refrigerator.