“No matter how painful something is, you have to take it. I saw that in both my parents.”

Obviously, I’m suffering from lack of sleep, but it truly is a blessing to be a mother.

You seek help from the elders. A society with elders is healthy. It’s not always that way in the West.

You benefit from getting in enough volume at the beginning of your training.

When you are no longer a boy, you have to be tough.

Less time alone with parents. Less attention for hurts and disappointments. Less approval for accomplishments. . . .

Their parents were told: “You will never see them again.

I could enjoy the life that I had by virtue of the educational attainment that my grandparents and parents had pursued. Education was always incredibly valued in our family.

You can check that box off. You want to make your parents proud for the tuition they paid at NYU.

My parents’ convictions, when it came to discipline, were not very strong.

The only marriage I’ve observed for any length of time is my parents – 35 years. I asked my pop, I go, ‘Pop, 35 years – what do you hope for?’ He’s like, ‘I hope you die first.’

Well to me growing, up I’ve had my own psychological war with my parents dying at such a young age. My mother was killed by a drunk driver, then two months later my father drowned.

Smoke Signals really mirrored the way I grew up and how I felt, and that movie was the first time I’d dealt with my parents’ death and how I felt that loss and sadness and anger.