I came up poor. My mother only had a fourth-grade education. My dad didn't have any education at all. But they were very structured. They worked hard. You know they didn't complain. They didn't murmur. And they believe in the Christ.

When my dad needed a shirt ironed he would yell downstairs to my mother who would drop everything and iron his shirt.

My dad used to flush my mother's head down the toilet. I was so screwed up.

People who have not done their research on me do not know that I am European born in Copenhagen Denmark to an Italian father from Napoli and a mother from Alabama who was singing opera and went to Europe met my dad fell in love and then moved back to Rome where I was raised between Rome and Hamburg.

I could not tell you the date of my mother's death. I could not tell you the date of my dad's death. These are not dates that I find significant.

When I was growing up my mother would say 'Your dad may have to learn about being a father because he lost his own and that would have affected him'.

My mother's a psychologist my stepfather's a psychologist my stepmother is a therapist and my dad's a lawyer. So it was all prominent in my life. I don't know anyone who doesn't know someone on some form of prescription medicine.

I've just got crap hair. Although I inherited a lot of stuff from my dad including giant knees I didn't get his good thick hair. I got my mother's thin wispy non-event hair instead.

My sisters have been baptized and my dad is a deacon at his church now. Sadly my mother passed away but what I can say is that the Jehovah Witnesses took very good care of her up until she died.

My mother always taught me even my dad just never let other people's opinions of you shape your opinion of yourself. And I never have and I never will.

You know my mother's beautiful my dad was a really handsome man and there was a lot of talk about looks when I was growing up.

I am lucky to have had an attentive curious and loving dad and heart-smart down-to-earth gifted mother. They changed the outlooks of their own lives and have never forgotten the people and organizations that helped them dream bigger than their circumstances should have allowed.

I met Gemma my wife when she was 12. She had a schoolgirl crush on me and her dad had arranged for her to meet me. Later she started coming to my concerts but I only got to know her well after her mother died. I rang to see how she was and that's how it started.

My mother told me Homer Ditto was not my father. Nope. Mom had had a fling with some other guy who was my dad. Some dude who didn't stick around too long who Mom was happy to get rid of. She chose Homer and Homer chose me so he lent me his name even though I didn't have his blood.

My dad is a Jack Nicholson lookalike and a frustrated performer my mother's into reading and poetry. I suppose the thing I owe them most is my confidence.

My dad was in the army. World War II. He got his college education from the army. After World War II he became an insurance salesman. Really I didn't know my dad very well. He and my mother split up after the war. I was raised by my maternal grandmother and grandfather and by my mother.

I was always embarrassed because my dad wore a suit and my mother wore flat pumps and a cozy jumper while my friends' parents were punks or hippies.

My mother taught public school went to Harvard and then got her master's there and taught fifth and sixth grade in a public school. My dad had a more working-class lifestyle. He didn't go to college. He was an auto mechanic and a bartender and a janitor at Harvard.

My mother and dad were big animal lovers too. I just don't know how I would have lived without animals around me. I'm fascinated by them - both domestic pets and the wild community. They just are the most interesting things in the world to me and it's made such a difference in my lifetime.

A spirit is like your mother my dad who've made it. They can come around but they come around in a loving way because they've already made it to God. Most people make it.

My dad was the district attorney of New Orleans for about 30 years. And when he opened his campaign headquarters back in the early '70s when I was 5 years old my mother wanted me to play the national anthem. And they got an upright piano on the back of a flatbed truck and I played it.

My mother raised three children on her own and my dad was a doctor working 16 hours a day.

I never saw any of my dad's stories. My mother said he had piles and piles of manuscripts.

My dad was like a stage mother he always pushed me to do what I wanted.