There's a certain mentality that military brats have, you know? Especially if you're a male, and your father's the one in the forces.

I have 10 brothers and sisters. My mother raised us because my father died when I was 8.

When you grow up starving, you cannot point with pride to a book you've just spent six hours reading. Picking cotton, sewing flour bags into clothes - those were the skills my father grew up appreciating.

My father was absolutely no good.

I've heard, 'You're not your father.' Well, you're right. I'm not. We've had two different careers.

The interesting thing about an absent father is, for a child, you don't know he's absent. You just think he's... tardy.

I guess I've played a lot of failures, which is a Huston quality, I guess. I love losers, though, and have never met anyone who hasn't been one sometime. I'm always looking to understand them, and my father had an extremely keen eye to be able to dissect and bring that forward in the way he told his stories.

My mother is a Chitrapur Saraswat from Mangalore and half-Telugu, and my father is a Bohri Muslim. My mother's father, J Rameshwar Rao, was the Raja of Wanaparthy, a principality of Hyderabad. He was influenced by the socialist movement and became the first Raja to give up his title.

I was born and brought up in Gurgaon to a middle class family. My father, now retired, worked with the revenue department, and my mother is a housewife. I have two siblings who are both married and have kids. But I was always interested in doing something apart from studies.

Our Heavenly Father loves you. He has created you to be successful and to have joy.

Reverence is fatal to literature.

My mother negotiated a plea deal, and my father went to trial. I think one thing we notice in their case that kind of stands out is how, in some ways, arbitrary the outcomes in the criminal justice system can be. And they did basically the same thing, identical thing.

Like my father, I would never as a child throw anything away, keeping old toys, electric motors and bits of broken machines under my bed in what I called my Box of Useful Things.

My mother's a secretary; my father's an electrician in a mining company.

My father grew up in Levittown, L.I., in the first tract housing built for G.I.'s. His dad had stormed the beaches of Omaha and died when my father was very young. My dad had to raise himself, pretty much.

My parents were no ordinary people. My mother turned Gandhian, and my father was a staunch communist. They named me after the great saint as a symbol of communal harmony.

I saw my father deal with every headache the government threw his way - whether it had to do with the signs on the front of the building or the prices on the showroom floor. He knew he could do better, if government would just get out of the way - and stay out of the way. He was right.

My brother Barry was into all sports, and so was my late father. For me, hockey was the one sport I loved and played. I didn't really pay much attention to the other sports.

Back in Nebraska, I was known as the fat model - the girl who was pretty for a big girl. My body, like my confidence, has been picked apart, manipulated, and controlled by others who didn't necessarily understand it.

I was very lucky - it wasn't a question of being wealthy; my father was just extremely lucky with the couple of jobs he got. So we got a chance to travel when nobody else could travel.