Father

My father was an autodidact. It wasn't a middle-class house. Shopkeepers are aspirant. He paid for me to go to private school. He was denied an education – he had a horrible childhood. He got a place at a grammar school and wasn't allowed to go.

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My father was an autodidact. It wasn’t a middle-class house. Shopkeepers are aspirant. He paid for me to go to private school. He was denied an education – he had a horrible childhood. He got a place at a grammar school and wasn’t allowed to go.

I'm a father of four so whenever I'm not working my kids have their different sports, or plays, or school performances, so I don't do a whole lot of other stuff besides being a dad.

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I’m a father of four so whenever I’m not working my kids have their different sports, or plays, or school performances, so I don’t do a whole lot of other stuff besides being a dad.

My father bought three ramshackle houses, rebuilt them, rented them out, kept clawing his way up the ladder. A man with a third grade education from the south.

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My father bought three ramshackle houses, rebuilt them, rented them out, kept clawing his way up the ladder. A man with a third grade education from the south.

I grew up in a secular environment, you know, in the '60s and '70s. My mother's family was Catholic, but you know, just very kind of conventionally Catholic. You know, nothing – there was nothing, you know, extreme about their version of religion. And my father was a free spirit, you know? He had no time for religion at all.

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I grew up in a secular environment, you know, in the ’60s and ’70s. My mother’s family was Catholic, but you know, just very kind of conventionally Catholic. You know, nothing – there was nothing, you know, extreme about their version of religion. And my father was a free spirit, you know? He had no time for religion at all.

Come, come, leave business to idlers, and wisdom to fools: they have need of 'em: wit be my faculty, and pleasure my occupation, and let father Time shake his glass.

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Come, come, leave business to idlers, and wisdom to fools: they have need of ’em: wit be my faculty, and pleasure my occupation, and let father Time shake his glass.

I've never been overwhelmed with a desire to become famous. It's not that I didn't want to have my work appreciated, but for some reason – maybe it's because my father disapproved of almost everything I did – in some secret place in my being was a desire to avoid success.

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I’ve never been overwhelmed with a desire to become famous. It’s not that I didn’t want to have my work appreciated, but for some reason – maybe it’s because my father disapproved of almost everything I did – in some secret place in my being was a desire to avoid success.

With my father and sister being very depressed for most of their lives, it was incumbent on me to try to make them laugh, in this ridiculous way. They were the wittiest people I knew, but to get a smile from them was like winning the lottery.

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With my father and sister being very depressed for most of their lives, it was incumbent on me to try to make them laugh, in this ridiculous way. They were the wittiest people I knew, but to get a smile from them was like winning the lottery.

I wanted a relationship like the one my mother and father had. It wasn't perfect; they had to work on it. But there was an unbelievable mutual respect.

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I wanted a relationship like the one my mother and father had. It wasn’t perfect; they had to work on it. But there was an unbelievable mutual respect.

My father was a very special human being. He was brilliant in academics, sports and the arts. He wrote, performed and directed plays in English and Hindi/Urdu at his regiment.

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My father was a very special human being. He was brilliant in academics, sports and the arts. He wrote, performed and directed plays in English and Hindi/Urdu at his regiment.

I met my brother when I was a month shy of my second birthday – he came into this world in style. I believe my father popped champagne in the hospital corridors and made sure all the nurses got a sip.

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I met my brother when I was a month shy of my second birthday – he came into this world in style. I believe my father popped champagne in the hospital corridors and made sure all the nurses got a sip.