Quotes About Upbringing

My mother had me when she was 15. My father died before I was born. So my mother was a teenage widow, and she used herself as her greatest example so I wouldn't end up in her position.

I grew up Catholic and still feel a lot of Catholic guilt. But my wife is not religious so we're not raising our daughters religiously.

I grew up middle class - my dad was a high school teacher; there were five kids in our family. We all shared a nine-hundred-square-foot home with one bathroom. That was exciting. And my wife is Irish Catholic and also very, very barely middle class.

I was raised in a religious environment, and my wife is one of the more religious people that I have ever known.

My kids are being raised in a much more affluent environment than was mine. My wife and I talk about that all the time because neither of us had this kind of experience.

My wife and I both come from Irish families. There are two kinds of Irish families: the hitting kind and the kidding kind. If you're fortunate - and both of us are - you come from the kidding kind of Irish family.

I was raised by this whole community of artists. It was pretty wild.

I was raised in a little church, the Grundy Methodist Church, that was very straight-laced, but I had a friend whose mother spoke in tongues. I was just wild for this family. My own parents were older, and they were so over-protective. I just loved the 'letting go' that would happen when I went to church with my friend.

Mother beat the hell out of us. She'd have wild outbursts.

I'm a city boy. I grew up in a big city, in Birmingham, and I want to write about a city. It's much richer tapestry for me than green fields. Fields and wild life make me feel ill. I don't like - I don't want to write about that stuff.

I was raised in a lower-income family, and we were wild.

Preacher's kids usually go one way or the other - way wild, or they follow in their dad's footsteps.

I beg you to look at the promising boys and beautiful girls in your homes and in your communities, and then you will not put these temptations in their way.

With the '60s era and Motown, my grandparents actually introduced us to that when I was younger, so I grew up listening to the Jackson Five, Aretha Franklin, The Temptations, The Supremes and Diana Ross' solo stuff. I just loved it.

It's very tempting to have a nanny and live in a gated community and have a chef - I'd love to have a few dinners cooked for me. But I don't want that for my children. When they're older, if people say to them, 'Did you have a chef?' I want them to be shocked by the question.

I think I really thought I was a boy until I was ten years old because my parents divorced when I was born, and so my three brothers were almost like my fathers growing up. So they taught me how to ride a bike and all that stuff. I really was just kind of a guy's girl and just kind of an outspoken - some could say obnoxious - in-your-face kid.

I grew up conservative because my mum was a conservative, and when I finally realized what conservatives were, I changed my mind immediately. As children, we tend to copy our parents.

My family wasn't rich, so when it comes to money, I tend to think, 'Err on the side of caution.'

People who have picture-perfect upbringings and lives tend not to be funny. I don't think they write from a position of pain.

I was brought up to express myself only when asked to express myself, and then to do so in a way that's pleasing to hear. But I've always had a need to make my presence known. I was just sort of born that way, I guess. It's my natural tendency.

I think my writing has an old-fashioned feel to it for whatever reason. I'm just so influenced by the music that I listened to growing up, a lot of it out of the '60s, so it has a natural tendency to feel like it's from another era.

I was brought up in great tenderness, and though my mind was proud to independence, I was never led to much independence of feeling.

If you had an essentially happy childhood, that tends to dwell with you.

I was raised in Maryland. My mom was born in London, and my dad was born in Chattanooga, Tennessee.