We’ve sourced some of the most interesting and thought-provoking Grandfather Quotes from Selah Louise Marley, Mandy Moore, Richard Paul Evans, Nick Harkaway, David Berman. Each of the following quotes is overflowing with creativity, and knowledge.
People tell me I have to follow in the footsteps of my mom and grandfather, but it’s a lot of pressure. I can’t really slip up and mess up the name.
I want to learn about a different religion. I grew up Catholic, but my grandfather was Jewish. Knowledge about other religions can help you understand your own better. I think it’s kind of hypocritical to believe one thing and don’t know about any others.
My grandfather, a devout Christian, had the gift of healing.
My family has something of a special relationship with confidence tricks: my grandfather was a professional swindler.
My great grandfather was the last practicing Jew in my family. He died in 1982.
My grandfather had been on the New York City force with his 11 brothers around the turn of the century. He was killed in the line of duty. My father, who was 16, was the oldest son, so he had to quit school and go to work to support his mother.
My grandfather was a newspaper publisher and his paper had all the comics in NYC, so some of my earliest memories are of reading the family paper and heading straight for the comics insert.
My grandfather was an autoworker, and I have a weapon he manufactured to protect himself from the company that he would carry to work. It’s a big iron pipe with a hunk of lead on the head. I think about how far we’ve come as companies from those days, where workers had to protect themselves from the company.
Both my parents’ brothers are into active politics and so was my grandfather.
My paternal grandfather Rustom Mehta had a huge influence on me because of his ethics and his values.
I have family in Ponce. It’s a shame that my grandfather passed and I wasn’t able to be there with him.
I lived on the Greek side of Cypress, and I think that’s also where my interest in politics really started to come alive. It was the first time that I was told I couldn’t go somewhere: My grandfather’s house is on the Turkish side, but we were not allowed to go there.
My grandfather passed away in 1946, too early to see his dream of an independent India being realized.
I wish my grandmother and grandfather were still alive, because they were able to keep me grounded.
Prostate cancer has taken a lot from me. First it took my grandfather and then my dad.
People have said I’m a puppet, an instrument of my grandfather, but I think they quickly realised that I’m my own person, that I have autonomy in my actions. I think they rapidly realised I could look after myself.
My grandfather played a big part in raising me, and he taught me how to be a gentleman. Since he first told me those types of things when I was 13 years old, I’ve taken all those types of lessons from him to heart. I’d like to keep that with me.
My grandfather was a persuasive man who made friends with people at every level of influence. In order to fight against our tribe’s termination, he went to newspapers and politicians and urged them to advocate for our tribe in Washington. He also supported his family through the Depression as a truck farmer.
The offers I get are for grandfathers, uncles – and they often die very quickly in the script.
I was getting worried I may not become a grandfather, but the Lord has blessed me.
My grandfather was coloured, my father was Negro, and I am Black.
Miami Beach – that’s where I grew up, in a middle-class Jewish family led by my maternal grandfather. Me, my great-grandmother – a Holocaust survivor, who was my roommate – my grandparents, my mom and her brother all shared a four-bedroom house.
When I was a kid, my grandfather used to watch Bollywood films. There’s a lot of colour and vibrancy to the Indian films.
My grandfather died when I was 12, but I remember the sorrow of my mother. Even now, she’s an old lady, but when she speaks about her father, she looks young. A love like that is undefeated, you know?
My mother was from West Bromwich; my grandfather was Pakistani. I had an aunt who started trying to trace the family tree and stopped when she saw what turned up.
The name America has definitely grown on me. I wish there was a big patriotic story behind it, but the truth is that my grandfather was a librarian who knew all sorts of random facts.
Khasla College came up 125 years ago. People gave their land and various states, including Nabha, Patiala, Jind and Kapurthala, made contributions for setting up the college. My grandfather and father remained its chancellor.
My grandfather was a chef for a Baron in Sicily before he came to America. I grew up with him. I used to do my homework at one end of the kitchen table while he cooked at the other end.
I hail from a family of musicians for the last 18 generations. My grandfather was a classical singer; his father was a sitar player.
My grandfather is from Burma and while the tanned skin and Cleopatra eyes skipped my genetic make-up, I inherited the full hairy gene.
My grandfather was Scottish, born in the slums of Glasgow.
My grandfather was an engineer who invented the automatic pilot for airplanes.
I never knew my grandfather. He died the year before I was born. But as a child, he did, of course, those wonderful illustrations, ‘Treasure Island,’ and whatnot.
My grandfather carried me around on his shoulders at 85.
I met my grandfather just before he died, and it was the first time that I had seen Dad with a relative of his. It was interesting to see my own father as a son and the body language and alteration in attitude that comes with that, and it sort of changed our relationship for the better.
My grandfather lived in New England all his life and was a Vermonter.
My grandfather built my first hoop. It was a peach basket up against a tree, and we played in the dirt. I couldn’t have been more than 6 when he put it up, and I just started playing.
A friend of mine said something powerful at his grandfather’s funeral. He said that the greatest lesson from his grandfather’s life was that he died empty, because he accomplished everything he wanted, with no regrets. I think that, along with leaving a legacy, would be the greatest sign of success.
Both me and Ishmeet were very naughty. We used to have my grandfather’s swords in the house. We used to take all these swords and take all the showpieces Mom had and slice them one by one. He actually locked my nana in the kitchen once for two hours.
My father didn’t know his last name. My father got his last name from his grandfather, and his grandfather got it from his grandfather who got it from the slavemaster.
My grandmother on my father’s side, a nightclub singer, was a Jewish refugee from Prussia who ended up in Jerusalem, where she met my grandfather – a British army officer. I remember as a child having bowls of chicken soup made by her. There were lots of interesting components, like feet and necks.
Our parents came home one day and heard us, and they thought it was the radio, but our grandfather told them it was us.
I have memories of being on the farm with my grandfather.
My grandfather, who was always keen to promote living artists, staged an unprecedented exhibition of Peploe’s works at Kirkcaldy in 1928.
I’m luckier than my grandfather, who didn’t move more than five miles from the village in which he was born.
George Foreman acts more like my grandfather. He and my grandfather act just alike – they’re both Christian type guys. They try to help everyone.
My family come from Cyprus. Both my father and my grandfather worked on the British bases there, and as the British government granted independence to Cyprus, they granted British passports to those who worked with them.
I’m awful at karaoke, but if I did have to sing, I’d go for my favourite Frank Sinatra song ‘I’ve Got You Under My Skin.’ The fact I love Frank is my grandfather’s doing: he drummed it into me from a very early age that Frank Sinatra is God.
I started out as Keith Mitchell. I had done probably about ten years of television work under that name. Then my grandfather passed away in 1984. I wanted to honor him and his name.
The family on my mom’s side, their whole business is inventing and pitching stuff. My grandfather is in infomercials. He’s a pitchman, so if you’re ever watching TV late at night, you’ll probably see him pitching knives. My great-grandfather also invented the plastic cheese grater.
My grandfather was a very courageous man, and I consider myself very lucky because I have three powerful role models that will obviously influence my career choices when I am older.
My grandfather influenced my brother, and my brother was my biggest influence.
My grandfather was an undocumented immigrant. My great-grandmother, my bisabuela, carried him over the border in her arms.
My grandfather had been a newspaper reporter, as was my uncle. They were pretty good writers and so I thought maybe somewhere down the line I would do some writing.
I learned conservatism through my grandfather; I didn’t know that was the name. I didn’t know these were conservative principles. Starting his life on a sharecropping farm. Working tremendously hard. Five years old, picking cotton and laying tobacco out to dry on a farm, and today he now owns that farm.
My grandfather would go to work at 6 A.M.
My role model was my grandfather. He instilled in me the feeling that no matter how successful you are you have a responsibility to help others.
My late grandfather, rest in peace, he was the biggest Knicks fan and he always told me I’d play for the Knicks, so it would mean a lot for me to play for the team.
My daughter wasn’t into that type of rock music and kind of played it off. But then these teenage boys started coming around, and Led Zeppelin, I don’t know, it became reinvented. Now she’s very proud of her grandfather.
My grandfather was a French professor in Kolkata, though I never met him.
With the discovery of Zinjanthropus at Olduvai Gorge in 1959, my grandmother Mary Leakey pioneered the research in East Africa with my grandfather Louis. Many more spectacular fossil finds have since been made, both in Africa and elsewhere, by many researchers driven to understand our past.
I first went on the road with the Rolling Stones in the year of our Lord, 1969. But my grandfather gave me away to a drummer when I was 15 years old.
For the first forty years of his real estate career, my grandfather never acquired debt. In the 1970s and ’80s, however, all of that changed as Donald’s ambition grew larger and his missteps became more frequent.
Your grandfather is and will always be your hero, your inspiration. He fought in World War II, came home to Little Rock, Arkansas, and worked for 50 years as a mailman in the segregated south. Not once did he get a job promotion in five decades. But he kept working all the same.
My grandfather was raising me, and in many respects, I was trying to understand what it meant to be a man. He was my role model.
When I lived summers at my grandparents’ farm, haying with my grandfather from 1938 to 1945, my dear grandmother Kate cooked abominably. For noon dinners, we might eat three days of fricasseed chicken from a setting hen that had boiled twelve hours.
I was born here in the city, born in the Bronx. Son of a cop. One grandfather was a taxi driver; the other was a firefighter. New York is in my DNA.
In the time of the robber barons, my great grandfather insisted on reinvesting and sharing profits with workers… He was told he was a socialist, that he was not welcome on Wall Street.
My grandfather is a blues musician.
Money has never been my drive. I have never seen the shortage of money in my life, so for me, I don’t want to buy a silk pillow or a private jet… My drive is to achieve more than what my grandfather achieved; my drive is to make a name for myself, get rid of this ‘star son’ tag that has been attached to me.
I’m a grandfather now.
I grew up with my grandfather, so I knew him really, really well. He was funny and opinionated and wonderful. He was fascinated by things and always curious.
My great-great-grandfather lived to age 28, my immigrant great-grandfather Pedro Gotiaoco died at 66, my grandfather was 68, and my father died at 34.
In 1980, I watched my first Republican convention with my grandfather.
I think everyone in the band has had someone that’s served in their family. I wouldn’t say that anybody has a military family, but both of my grandfathers were in the military.
I remember meeting Roger Moore at my grandfather’s house as a young boy and being impressed because I was such a big fan of ‘007.’ But I was young, and I didn’t have a perception of what celebrity was or who my grandfather was… I still don’t, really.
I put the copy of ‘A Christmas Carol’ that my grandfather had first read to me 60 years ago on my desk, and I began to write. The result, for better or for worse, is the ‘Christmas Spirits.’ I plan to read it to my grandson.
My mother was actually born in Ohio but raised in West Virginia where her family had a laundry. She has a West Virginian accent. My father was born in China, but he’s the son of an American citizen. My paternal grandfather was born in San Francisco in 1867.
I had a sense of pride for the armed forces from the time I was a child because of my grandfather. He taught me to salute. He told me that every time I see army personnel, I should salute as a mark of respect.
I grew up, as many Indians do, in an archipelago of tongues. My maternal grandfather, who was a surgeon in the city of Madras, was fluent in at least four languages and used each of them daily.
My childhood name that my father gave me, my mother, my grandmother, grandfather, family and friends all call me T.I.P.
I have one. I may get another during the off-season, I might get my son’s name but I’m not sure yet. The one I have is my Hebrew name, which I share with my grandfather, and it’s not the best tattoo.
Mobile is a seaport town, and we ate a lot of seafood. We’d go fishing, we’d catch our fish and we’d eat our fish. It was a ritual on Saturday morning for all my family – my grandfather, my brothers, my uncles, my father – to go fishing, and then the ladies of the family would clean the fish and fry them up.
You know you’ve been around a long time when your stuntman says, ‘Yeah, my grandfather doubled you.’
I remember my grandfather believed women were second-class citizens and told my mother that it was a shame she had brains because she was a girl and shouldn’t carry on her education.
My father is a very hardworking guy, and that’s his focus in life, so I got a lot of the paternal attention that a boy wants and needs from my grandfather.
To be honest, I’ve never invested in the stock market. My grandmother used to warn us against the stock exchange. My grandfather had lost a lot money in the share market. We are a working class family.
I don’t usually get to play fathers or grandfathers or uncles. Now that I’m older, maybe I can play people closer to myself. I’d like that.
My grandfather, Harry Ferguson, was a butcher in Hill of Beath; so even though my grandparents lived in some poverty, we got loads of beef. My grandmother, Meg, was a fine Scottish cook who did slow cooking.
It’s funny because from the time I was a kid, I knew what I was going to do. What’s even funnier is that my dad and my grandfather didn’t want me to work at the pawn shop, but I was deadset on it.
I was born into a very important family in Japan. My grandfather was a descendant of the Emperor, and we were very wealthy.
My grandfather and dad worked at General American Transportation Corp. in Chicago, a company that made tank cars and freight cars. We had a pragmatic, Republican, manufacturing, Illinois consciousness as far as employment went.
My grandfather, my grandmother especially, I have a whole family of activists, they’ve always told me to stand up for what I believe in.
‘Catcher In The Rye’ was my favorite book, honestly. I read it when I was thirteen, and the book was a bit of a family heirloom because it was passed down from my grandfather to my father to my older brother and then to me.
My dad’s really funny. The male sense of humor – like my grandfather’s and such – is pretty bizarre. Basically my dad’s side of the family is where the bizarreness comes from. It’s a little goofy and a little out there.
My two grandfathers fought in World War II.
My grandfather came over from Puerto Rico and raised his kids speaking English so that it would be easier for them to assimilate.
My Swedish grandmother was the daughter of a dairy farmer who lived near Hedemora. My Swedish grandfather worked as a clerk for the Swedish railways in the Stockholm station.
It’s probably worth noting that although I’m ethnically Greek, my grandfather was actually born in Turkey and came through Greece on his way to the United States.
My grandfather was an illegal immigrant for the 60 or so years he was in the United States. I had another great-great-grandmother on my mom’s side who snuck in in a suitcase.
My grandfather was a ship’s cook, and he came back from the Far East very often with strange little toys. One of the things he brought back was a puzzle box, which obsessed me for a long time.
I was brought up largely by my grandfather because my father only returned from a prisoner-of-war camp in 1947 and worked in the nearest small town, so I hardly ever saw him.
I was named after my Jewish grandfather who left Poland early in the 20th century. What I knew from an early age was that he had lived most of his life in England, his Jewish wife had died, and he married a non-Jewish woman who was my grandmother.
My grandfather was in the Indian Army, and my father started working to fund his own higher education and joined evening classes.
My grandfather came to Canada from Romania just before the Second World War, already in debt after buying his boat ticket on borrowed dime.
I don’t feel any pressure to live up to the legacy of my grandfather; if I did, I’d be mad. I’m as much of a fan of his work as anyone.
My dad recently reminded me that my grandfather’s cousin was Lefty Frizzell.
My grandfather, who is English, was a member of a gentleman’s club called the Caledonian, which you can only be a member of if you have Scottish lineage.
I’ll never forget the first time I saw someone who had died. It was my grandfather. And I knelt next to his coffin. And all I could do was eye level was look at his hands. They were enormous hands. And all I could think was, ‘Those hands dug freedom for me.’
My grandfather was a pawnbroker, and when I was in first or second grade, my parents opened their own store. I probably learned to count by putting pawn tickets in numerical order in the back room of the shop.
My grandfather died under house arrest.
My grandfather was a great chef.
I’m very proud of my gold pocket watch. My grandfather, on his deathbed, sold me this watch.
My grandfather was a Pentecostal preacher, and there was nothing really modern that went on under their roof. We watched television, but they were very picky about what we could watch – old Westerns and stuff that wasn’t vulgar or violent at all.
The house I was born in in Somalia was right next to a big market. A lot of beggars or panhandlers would be in front of our house constantly, and my grandfather and grandmother would always invite them in to have food with us and have them take whatever was left over.
Some people assume I’m a spoilt trust fund kid who’s never had to work for anything, while others think the best of me because of the good experience they had with my grandfather. It’s difficult to digest the fact that they may never see me for who I am.
There is no way one can remake ‘Mughal-e-Azam.’ What my grandfather did, we cannot even think of emulating. The film is a legend, and we should leave it at that.
My grandfather left Cuba when Castro came into power and literally left everything. He had two suitcases and two kids and showed up in New Jersey and waited for my uncle to meet up with him. Imagine – there were no cell phones back then!
My grandfather would live to see his children become doctors and ministers, accounts and professors.
I grew up hearing stories about how my maternal grandfather had put himself through engineering school in New York City. He saved money by walking down to a gas station once a week to take a shower. When I applied to college, both education and investment value were important to me.
Like lycanthropy, the nerd gene can skip a generation. My maternal grandfather was a technophile.
My own father and grandfather served in the Army.
I’ve always been fascinated by books. When I was young, my grandfather used to hand out a book – which would be anything from a biography to a classic – to me every week and ask me to write a piece on what I thought about it. On the other hand, my mother used to love reading thrillers and bestsellers.
My grandfather John came from Cork. I have six degrees of separation in Ireland.
My grandfather was a movie producer, and so I grew up on movie sets.
I keep lot of my opinions to myself. My grandfather, who was a gravedigger, told me one day, ‘Son, the next time you go by the cemetery, remember that a third of the people are in there because they got into other people’s business.’
My grandfather Urey was my hero. He worked three jobs. He had a dry cleaner’s factory job in the day and a dry cleaner’s factory job at night and when that was done with that, he mopped floors in a restaurant.
I’ve adopted my grandfather’s method of tapping talent. It’s our ancestors’ blessings and the vibe of the company which made actors enjoy working with us on projects.
Throughout his presidency, my grandfather made it clear that he alone could fix nothing; that he alone had no answers. He had the courage to plainly admit America’s shortcomings, to then lay out bold plans to address those problems and to ask his fellow Americans for help in solving them.
Bond is actually my dream role. Only because it was the film I watched with my grandfathers and father from a very young age, and it would be the only way that I could actually repay them with my art form for what they’ve done for me.
My grandfather was not a musician but he was an artist – a painter, a decorative painter.
My grandfather was a general in the Nationalist Chinese Air Force during World War II, and I grew up hearing the pilot stories and seeing pictures of him in uniform.
My husband is from Hawaii and his father who was also born in Hawaii was a teenager when Pearl Harbor happened, right before church and he ran up and got on the roof of his grandfather’s house and watched the planes go over.
Farmers are always conservative. They stick to what they have learned from their fathers and from their grandfathers. This is the same all over the globe.
I think about my grandfather who’s 89 years old, and the last thing he needs is more money out of his pocket.
My grandfather loved the countryside.
My family was pious and Presbyterian mainly because my grandfather was pious and Presbyterian, but that was more of an inherited intuition than an actual fact.
My grandmother is British. She was in the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force during World War II. That’s where she met my grandfather, who was sailing for the British Royal Navy. She was a war bride.
I read a lot, but in comparison to my family, it’s nothing. I keep telling them, ‘I’m the illiterate of the family.’ My grandfather used to read five books at a time.
I see the player piano as the grandfather of the computer, the ancestor of the entire nightmare we live in, the birth of the binary world where there is no option other than yes or no and where there is no refuge.
I always wanted to follow in the footsteps of my maternal grandfather, who was a doctor.
A long time ago, my grandfather used to play blackjack with me, when I was very small, and I quite enjoyed that.
I have my real name and RJ. I’ve gone by RJ since I was eight, but I was named Roy after my grandfather. They called me Little Roy, which sounded like Leroy with a Texas accent, but my mom didn’t want to have a Leroy as a son, so it went to RJ.
My grandfather criticized me thousands of times, and he gave me a compliment once.
That’s where I get my whole music theory from, my pops and my grandfather.
I got family in the U.K. on my dad’s side of the family. My grandfather’s brother moved to the U.K. from Jamaica. It’s a pretty big family I’ll have there.
With his gigantic personality, my grandfather burst onto the great political panorama of that era made up only of little men with little ideas.
My grandfather was one of the very, very first, if not the first, Samoan wrestlers to become known on a worldwide basis.
My grandfather served as a gunner aboard the U.S.S. Alabama in the Pacific theater during WWII.
My grandfather was like a father figure to me.
My parents and my grandfather on my mom’s side would travel the earth. They went to Australia and China, and they went to probably every soccer game I ever played.
When people say ‘Charlie Chaplin’ I still think now of the guy in the moustache and bowler hat and funny walk – I don’t think of an old man who was my grandfather.
My parents were not poor, I mean we were a very average middle-class family of academics, but my grandfather happened to have built house literally next to one of Kolkata’s largest slum.
My grandfather was a direct descendent of Guru Nanak, which my father also carried forth.
My grandfather was born in India and three generations of my family served there.
When I was four or five years old, my grandfather showed me how to build things, paint, saw. Through years of fixing bikes, repairing lawn mowers, I learned how things work.
I come from a family of actors. My grandfather was like a Laurence Olivier with the Comedie Francaise. Since I was four I went every week to the Comedie Francaise. My aunt and grandmother were there, but my grandfather was a big star.
My grandfather was a cop in Long Island. I often try to draw on things that I’ve heard about him.
My mom. My grandma, my grandfather. We have a very strong, strong line of amazing people in the family. Very strong women.
My grandfather was actually a doo-wop singer in Panama. They were called The Dominos. He was the high soprano voice.
My grandmothers are Irish-American and German-American; my grandfather is from the Caribbean. My father is African-American. My family looked funny. I just started naturally imitating whoever I was talking to. I didn’t want to be a phony, but I felt very authentic in the moment.
Just because someone’s dead doesn’t mean it’s over. My grandfather died more than 25 years ago, but I still think of him a lot and smell his smell.
My grandfather on one side was trained as a cabinetmaker but eventually worked as a coachbuilder and then built cars. I inherited from him a love of cars, but with no technical ability whatsoever, sadly!
My girlfriend Rhonda, who’s now my wife, I graduated from high school, she got pregnant. My grandfather said, ‘You’ve got to do the right thing.’
I’m a grandfather now, and when I watch children’s shows with my two-year-old grandson, Arlo, I’m delighted because it’s completely non-traditional casting. It feels like a utopia. How the world should be.
Our family’s values come from my grandfather’s embrace of a Gandhian worldview.
My grandfather spoke fluent Spanish and I have family members who speak fluent Spanish.
My parents were practicing Jews. My mother grew up in an orthodox synagogue, and after my grandfather died, she went to a conservative synagogue and a little later ended up in a reform synagogue. My father was in reform synagogues from the beginning.
I started putting down my thoughts on paper out of loneliness while I was studying in America. I was very close to my grandfather, and when he died, I couldn’t visit home. I started scribbling those thoughts.
I grew up in the kitchen, mostly with my grandfather, my mother and my aunt Raffy.
I’m part Spanish. My paternal grandfather came from Spain via Singapore to Manila. On my mother’s side it’s more mixture, with a Filipino mother and a father who was Scotch Irish-French; you know, white American hybrid. And I also have on my father’s side a great-great-grandmother who was Chinese. So, I’m a hybrid.
My brothers were rabbis. My grandfather was a rabbi.
Luckily, my grandfather was willing to sacrifice everything for me.
Darian is a Greek name, and my grandson is definitely going to be a Greek God, just like his grandfather.
Little by little, not without astonishment, I rediscovered the great names of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, who had been the master thinkers of my grandfather and other Mexican liberals. They did no offer me a doctrine or a catechism: they were and they are a source, an inspiration.
You have to do your own growing no matter how tall your grandfather was.
When I was a child, I loved old people. My New Hampshire grandfather was my model human being.
I can’t claim my grandfather’s work has influenced mine directly, but his life certainly inspired me to follow this path.
My own wandering blood comes from my seafaring grandfather, who, after he had left the sea and settled on shore, still governed his house by a ship’s rules.
My grandfather couldn’t stand either one of my parents.
I started taking piano lessons when I was about 5, and there was always a lot of music in my family: my parents both play instruments, my grandparents were classical violinists, and my grandfather was actually a music professor and a conductor.
I created the Women’s Federation for World Peace in order to restore all that woman originally lost. You American women don’t need a man in the position of grandfather, parents, husband, elder or younger brother. You only need the true Adam.
My grandfather started a school for the underprivileged in Chandigarh, and that is why we moved from Himachal to Chandigarh. It was a small school, where even I would teach while in school.
My grandfather, who’s still alive, has always been involved in art, antiques, and things like that. I think I learned so much from him.
My grandfather was born in 1920. His grandfather was born in 1860, at the beginning of the Civil War, into an America where slavery had yet to be abolished. And so, as I have sometimes thought about it, I dodged slavery by just five generations.
Until I was four years old I lived in the house of my paternal grandfather, about two miles from the pretty little village of Wallace, at the mouth of the river of that name.
My grandfather was a really, really tough no-nonsense factory worker who emigrated from Ireland in about 1900 to Bridgeport, Conn. He had a big effect on me. Those guys who took a great leap out into what they knew not were the ones who were the real stars, the real heroes.
My mother wanted to abort me, and that was basically a family secret. My grandfather stopped her and said that he had a dream and saw me perfectly. He was a prophetic dreamer, like Martin.
With every year that passes, I get further away from my target audience, and while I’ve been happy to think of myself as a father figure to these kids, I’d be a little distressed to be thought of as a grandfather figure.
I was taught by my grandfather that anything that your mind can conceive, you can have. It’s a reality.
When I was a little girl, my grandfather, who I was very close to, used to grow yellow roses. He had yellow roses growing all the way up his drive.
My grandfather was a big influence on me, but I lost him when I was a kid.
The wedding ring on my left hand was bought by my grandfather, Samuel Miliband, in Brussels in 1920. I never knew him, as he died when I was one. But his ring was kept by my aunt until it was placed on my finger by my wife Louise 32 years later.
Being resourceful and creating is a big part of my Lithuanian culture. My grandfather is part of who I am, too. He was a professional wrestler. He had a very functional, very slick, long frame.
In the early ’50s, my great-grandmother and grandfather raised a baby gorilla named Bobo who wore clothes and played with the neighborhood kids.
The day is past when schools could afford to give sufficient time and attention to the teaching of the ancient languages to enable the student to get that enjoyment out of classical literature that made the lives of our grandfathers so rich.
My father’s grandfather was in Heart Mountain.
My dad was a Marine, my aunt is still in the Navy, and my grandfathers both served. So, it’s a huge honor for me to represent my country in any way I can.
I remember as a kid watching that movie – ‘Cool Hand Luke’ – with my grandfather.
My grandfather was a Russian-Jewish immigrant who lived in Northern Ireland and apparently when he sang in the synagogue he made everyone cry.
I’m actually named Matthew William Kearney: my middle name is named after my grandfather.
We’re seeing a much larger ministry here for the general community. Not just Catholics, but others are calling us too. They’re not looking for lawyers or suing their grandfathers, but counseling and healing.
My dad’s a bodybuilder. My whole life I’ve been taught to train the hard way. I believe in earning strength, not buying it. My grandfather raised me old school: In baseball, you work for whatever you get.
Edgar Allan Poe, I think he’s a brilliant poet. I was actually given a copy of his work when I was, like, 8 years old that was my grandfather’s, and I still carry it around with me.
I’m not the lovable, wonderful, tenderhearted grandfather that you read about in books. I’m grouchy and curmudgeonly, and I have a lot of rules.
My grandfather, Daddy Jeff, made me promise to him that even though I’m already an actress, I’d still finish school.
My grandfather was a Pentecostal preacher.
I’m a quarter Indian; my grandfather’s originally from New Delhi.
My grandfather was an amazing man. You talk about character and integrity, everyone who knew him, whether they agreed with him or not, said, ‘George Romney is a good man, and he sticks to his principles: a man of honesty and hard work, integrity.’
In Bavaria, many homes have a cosy room which is all wood and is filled with special things. My grandfather had such a room, and he made the panels on the walls himself; each one told a story.
My grandfather taught me trees and the Latin names of trees when I was five or six. His father was a forester, so he knew them all.
I’ve loved musical theater ever since I was a kid. My mother’s a pianist, and my grandfather was an amateur theater director and stand-up comic. And I was an only child. And I loved attention. So from an early age, my family was teaching old musical songs.
I fought my grandfather like you wouldn’t believe. I went my own way and decided to become a racing driver. I don’t think I would ever have fought as hard as I did if my grandfather had been a reasonable person.
When my grandfather died, I was on tour, and I didn’t go to the funeral. I never got to say goodbye, and this is one of the problems of being in a rock band is that you’re away, and your loved ones die, and you can’t even see them.
After my grandfather’s plane took enemy fire, he was denied permission to land at the first available airstrip. In that classic British bureaucratic way, they said he had to go back to your own airbase in the Midlands. They crashed between the coast and the airfield.
A doctor today would never prescribe the treatments my grandfather used in the Confederate Army, but a minister says pretty much the same thing today that a minister would have said back then.
My father is Emmit and my grandfather is Emmit, but I wanted something extra so I could separate my Emmitt from the rest of them. Even though on my birth certificate it has one T, I just added the extra T for me.
When my grandfather was a journalist for the Detroit Tigers, he dressed the part. I mention it always to our local media: sport coat, tie, very professional and a nice cap on his head. And they also developed very close friendships with the players and staff traveling.
Fortunately for me, my grandfather gave us a life I could never dream of. He was my high school football coach, my best friend, my school teacher – really my dad.
My mom being raised in England, her father always wanted to pursue the arts and wanted to have a stage career in England. According to her, he never had the courage to actually pursue it full-time. I think that my grandfather’s parents thought that it wasn’t a formidable job to have.
The divisive environment my grandfather created in the family is the water that Donald has always swum in, and that division continues to benefit him at the expense of everyone else.
I remembered that my grandfather had spent his teenage years in Shanghai and that he went back after he finished medical school to work there in a hospital. So I went back into my family archives and was able to find out his exact address; it was a street that was in the French Concession.
We would go down to Riverside, California, which is very poor now, but that’s where my grandfather grew up. He grew up during the Depression in Riverside.
My grandfather lived across the garden from us, and in his attic he had a lot of radios, appliances and inventions that he had made over 50 years, such as a keyboard called a clavioline, which can be heard on some Beatles songs – it was popular in the 60s. So we had all that at home.
Electing the first Catholic president, my grandfather, in 1960, did not mean that religious intolerance disappeared from our land.
My great grandfather from my father’s side, Sir Akbar Hydari, was the prime minister of the Nizam of Hyderabad. He was instrumental in setting up the Osmania university. His wife set up the Hydari club for women so that they could play tennis, and she also set up the first girls’ school in Hyderabad.
Everyone in my family has been in music – my cousins, my grandmother, my grandfather – so it’s quite a big family tree.
I never thought about becoming a politician. But during the military dictatorship, my grandfather was put in prison six times and my father twice. If my family and my country didn’t have this history, I might be a professor somewhere today.
My father was always respectful to my grandfather. I really wanted that to be known because I never saw him disrespect my grandfather, and I never saw them have a cross word.
Smoking-related heart disease runs in my family. My grandfather and great-grandfather died in their early 40s.
Both grandfathers fought in different wars. My mother’s father fought in World War II, and then my father’s father fought in Korea. And they’re both these country boys, one from rural Tennessee and one from rural Louisiana – and they never went back home.
You know, my dad was a second lieutenant in the Air National Guard Reserve, and my grandfather wasn’t particularly happy about the time it took away from the family business.
I was blessed enough to talk to my grandfather the night before he passed, and he told me that everything was going to be okay, and I know he wanted me continue and do my best, be happy, and that’s what keeps me going.
My full name is Olatunde Olateju Olaolorun Fagbenle. I was named after my grandfather. It’s Yoruba, which is, like, southern Nigeria.
I don’t mean to get dark again, but my grandfather has been battling terminal illness. And you know, he never complains. And he has a lot of reasons to complain, but he never complains. And he lost his son a long time ago, when I was a young boy – my uncle. And he never complained.
My grandfather worked with charities his whole entire life, and we grew up living with him. He always told me about the other side of the world and everything that’s going on.
I bring a copy of ‘Dracula’ with me wherever I go, the book. It’s my favorite book in the world, it’s absolutely incredible. My great-great grandfather was the guy who printed the first edition, so he’s the first person to ever put ‘Dracula’ on the written page.
I’m quite sure that, had Twitter been of an age when my grandfather was prime minister, I’m sure they would have used it. He was a brilliant and gifted communicator.
My grandfather, father, and uncle were chefs, and my other uncle was a butcher.
We are a mixed up people. We have mixed up ways of naming, too… When my father’s brothers and sisters first went to colonial schools, they had to produce a surname. They also had to show they were good Christians by adopting a western name. They adopted my grandfather’s name as surname. Wainaina.
I came from a family of scientists. My father is a microbiologist and my grandfather is an organic chemist. I had a very science- and math-heavy childhood.
I never saw my grandfather because he had died before I was born, but I have good memories of my grandmother and of how she could play the piano at the old house.
I don’t have a traditional design background, but it’s inherent to me. My father was in the fabric industry, and even my grandfather and my great-grandfather were lace manufacturers.
My father, my grandfather, the wrestling business, the WWE in particular, has really given me everything. A lot of happiness, my kids are taken care of, my wife is happy, they get to travel. A lot of pluses come with it; the Hall Of Fame would just be the cherry on top.
My grandmother was a flight attendant; my mother had a pilot’s license, and my grandfather was a pilot. That’s how my grandmother and grandfather met.
The music is something outside myself that’s also inside myself… Music and a sense of another presence always went hand in hand. Even when I was three, I would improvise music, and my maternal grandfather would act as an audience and used to applaud. I would imitate things like thunder and rain.
There are many examples in our history of overheated rhetoric leading to fear and prejudice and government overreach. My own grandfather, a sociologist, was dragged in front of the House Un-American Activities Committee. He said he wasn’t a Communist and explained that American Negroes were patriots like everyone else.
My parents were just as smart as I am, just as hard working if not harder; I think my father and grandfather were probably better men, yet I’ve been able to accomplish things professionally that they were not able to.
At home – where my grandmother certainly had to deal with Donald more than my grandfather did because he was at work all the time – he was incredibly disrespectful to her. He didn’t listen to her. He was a slob. He tormented – in one way or another, I think he tormented all of his siblings.
It is really quite amazing that all of the folks supporting privatization, from the president on down, keep invoking the name of my grandfather, Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
I had this extraordinary role-model of rags to riches success in my grandfather and yet I was a girl, and girls in a very military family were not meant to have professional careers. I think that created the spur and edge to drive me on.
We need to work our level best in this legislative session to help grow Montana’s economy, so that grandchildren can stay in Montana, grandchildren can visit their grandmother and grandfather by driving across town, not flying across the country.
Two of my grandfathers had been artists, lifelong oil painters, so I was exposed to art very young. I’ve always been interested in it, although I never pursued it as a career or even as an avocation.
I virtually grew up at Air Force bases, and when I was younger, I’d dream of wearing a uniform like my father and grandfather. But when I turned 10, I felt theatre and acting were my calling.
Every designer needs a story. Mine is all about glamour because my family has been in the business of glamour for three generations. My grandfather Shamshuddin Khan started his embroidery and fabric-making business in the 1930s.
The only thing I don’t like is being called the ‘grandfather of the cellphone’ because that makes me a little older than I prefer to be.
People have to render judgment. In my case, I’ve said upfront openly, I’ve made mistakes at times. I’ve had to go to God for forgiveness. I’ve had to seek reconciliation. But I’m also a 68-year-old grandfather, and I think people have to measure who I am now and whether I’m a person they can trust.
Part of what I loved – and love – about being around older people is the tangible sense of history they embody. I’m interested in military history, for instance, because both my grandfathers fought in World War II. I’m interested in writing because one of those grandfathers wrote books.
My Welsh grandmother Mair didn’t meet my grandfather until she was 28, quite old to be unmarried in the early ’40s.
My grandfather had strong opinions. He was an argumentative character and quite staunchly socialist.
I never talk much about my family, but my grandfather was friendly with these guys, with magicians and ventriloquists on the highest levels, and I was just… interested.
My father and grandfather were businessmen. The family business was Adelphi Paints in New Jersey. When the first energy crisis came in the early 1970s, the business suffered.
My mother’s brother is a very good singer. My grandfather took up classical singing lessons and learnt to play the harmonium.
I come from a law enforcement family. My grandfather, William J. Comey, was a police officer. Pop Comey is one of my heroes. I have a picture of him on my wall in my office at the FBI, reminding me of the legacy I’ve inherited and that I must honor.
Since, in the best Southern tradition, I was named Edmund Valentine White III, sometimes when people look up my books on Amazon they find ‘Chocolate Drops from the South’ by my grandfather.
My grandfather was a politician and lived in Washington, D.C., so as a kid, I used to go to D.C. every other weekend.
I spent my summers in Sonoma at my grandfather’s ranch, we called it Rancho Rodeo.
Studying my grandfather’s life and legacy has shown me what it takes to be a good public servant. Curiosity. Compassion for others. Humility. Determination to stand tall for your beliefs in the face of opposition. No one believed these things more than my grandfather.
My grandfather went through a lot in his life.
My grandfather did a lot of things in his life. What he was most proud of was raising his family.
When I was a little kid – and even still – I loved magic tricks. When I saw how movies got made – at least had a glimpse when I went on the Universal Studios tour with my grandfather, I remember feeling like this was another means by which I could do magic.
The comparison between Harry Cohen and my grandfather is not one that bears close examination.
My favourite book as a child was an old ‘Newne’s Children’s Encyclopaedia’ which my grandfather had bought just before World War II and donated to our family after seeing how interested we were in it. Each volume had special chapters called ‘Things Boys can Do.’ My brothers and I would pick out interesting projects.
My grandfather was a shoemaker who worked in a shoe factory.
My father passed from cancer in 2000; his brother died of cancer before that. My grandfather died of cancer.
Henry Winkler is the most lovable man. He is like everybody’s favorite grandfather.
My mom’s a psychologist, and so is my grandfather.
Three of my children are medical doctors, they know at least a hundred times as much about your body as my grandfather knew, but they don’t know much more about soul than he did.
I’ve got deep roots in Kalamazoo, with a grandfather, Harold Allen, who was a big part of Upjohn Co. for many years as the corporate secretary and friends with W. E. Upjohn.
I’m originally from Dallas, Texas, where Bonnie and Clyde were from, so when I was a little kid, my grandfather used to drive me past the Barrow Filling Station. At my elementary school, there was a barn outside that they used to say was a Bonnie and Clyde hangout.
My mom is a painter and photographer and my grandfather was an artist, so I’ve always been surrounded by creative people.
In ‘Profiles in Courage,’ my grandfather, John F. Kennedy, praised leadership that put country above party, elevated principles over petty politics and promoted progress before personal interests.
In 1957, which is now 57 years ago, my grandfather and then-Prime Minister Nobusuke Kishi welcomed Prime Minister Menzies as the first Australian Prime Minister to visit Japan after World War II and drove the conclusion of the Japan-Australia Agreement on Commerce.
When I am an old man, I will tell my grandchildren bedtime stories about when I won the Champions League, hopefully when I won the World Cup, but most of all, I will tell them that their grandfather used to play with Lionel Messi.
My dad’s career in politics, along with that of my grandfather, Prescott Bush, taught us that good people motivated by helping others can jump into the political fray and make a positive difference.
Everyone was a footballer in my family. My grandfather Wilf played for Newcastle and my cousins play. It’s in the blood.
My aunt Caroline was really a character. She lived and worked in my grandfather’s old house and even wore some of his clothes.
A long time ago, when all the grandfathers and grandmothers of today were little boys and little girls or very small babies, or perhaps not even born, Pa and Ma and Mary and Laura and Baby Carrie left their little house in the Big Woods of Wisconsin.
My grandfather once ventured upon publishing a volume of hymns. I never heard anyone speak in their favour or argue that they ought to have been sung in the congregation. In that volume, he promised a second if the first should prove acceptable. We forgive him the first collection because he did not inflict another.
My grandfather was a healer, and he used matches often. Once, he burnt a wart off my finger and then rubbed the ash deep into it, and it never did come back. When he worked at a factory, people would line up next to his truck to be healed. He died before he could teach us any of his secrets.
I grew up with a marine grandfather. I was never allowed to say ‘can’t’ or ‘no’, and I was never allowed to back down.
I follow the Hindutva of my father and grandfather.
I go back to Africa every year. I have a home there. You know, my grandfather lives back there in Cameroon.
Growing up, I didn’t give my grandfather’s photography a second thought. I wasn’t involved in his work, except that I helped my dad print his negatives.
My grandfather… always used to say – I remember it really well – that he was proud to be a politician. He wanted to redeem that word.
The first grown-up book that I read on my own was a nineteenth-century edition of ‘Tales from Livy’ that I’d found in my grandfather’s library.
My grandfather was a lot like a white Jewish George Jefferson, and he did not enjoy my work very much.
I had a great childhood. Even though I never had my own room – I shared the porch with my grandfather and kept my belongings in one drawer of a dresser that was jammed next to the piano – I never went hungry and was always supported by my family.
Well I’m a third-generation musician. My Grandfather’s a musician and my father and mother were both musicians and so I’m a musician. It was just natural that I should be a musician ’cause I was born into the family.
Our oceans cover two-thirds of what my grandfather called our water planet, and the part of the ocean that falls under the jurisdiction of the United States covers an area larger than the country itself.
Tolkien is considered the grandfather of fantasy and, for me, I consider myself the grandson, with Terry Brooks as the kind of crazy uncle of fantasy, being the one who brought me into it.
My grandfather was a man, when he talked about freedom, his attitude was really interesting. His view was that you had obligations or you had responsibilities, and when you fulfilled those obligations or responsibilities, that then gave you the liberty to do other things.
My grandfather was a lawyer, my dad was a lawyer, my mum was a lawyer, I got an uncle who’s a lawyer, I got cousins that are lawyers.
I have an older brother who’s an actor and a grandfather who was an actor.
I’ve been called a moron since I was about four. My father called me a moron. My grandfather said I was a moron. And a lot of times when I’m driving, I hear I’m a moron. I like being a moron.
Whenever I’m in Edinburgh, which I visit often, I always try to hop on a train to Kirkcaldy to visit the art gallery, where my grandfather was convenor for 36 years, to revisit the marvellous paintings from my childhood – as do other family members.
My father was a great business leader and humanitarian who dedicated his life to the company and the community. He also was a wonderful family man, a loving husband, father, grandfather and great-grandfather. He will be greatly missed by everyone who knew him, yet he will continue to inspire us all.
But whatever my failure, I have this thing to remember – that I was a pioneer in my profession, just as my grandfathers were in theirs, in that I was the first man in this section to earn his living as a writer.
My father, a refugee from Eastern Europe, was preparing a fraudulent marriage to an American citizen as a route to this country when he was sponsored, making fraud unnecessary. My wife’s grandfather bought papers from another Chinese villager to be able to come to the United States.
My grandfather, Harry, died when my dad was in his early 20s, so I never met him. Amazingly, he was 6ft tall. That gene definitely never filtered down to me!
One becomes a grandfather and one sees the world a little differently. Certainly the world becomes a more vulnerable place when one has a grandchild, or now I have two. And I think that possibly there’s some tenderness that came out of just time and age and being a parent and grandparent.
If the grandfather of the grandfather of Jesus had known what was hidden within him, he would have stood humble and awe-struck before his soul.
I haven’t done any genealogical exploring myself, though members of my family and also of my husband’s family have traced things back. I have a great grandfather on my mother’s side who was a musician, and I’d like to know more about his life.
I was born and grew up in Fitzgerald, way down in south Georgia. It was a mill town and my family ran the cotton mill. My grandfather was mayor many times and my family felt deeply rooted to that spot.
My grandfather had a paint store. It’s what put my mom through college. Small business is part of my family history.
My grandfather died before I was born, so I never had the chance to speak with him about his father. But I learned about him from books.
Both of my grandfathers were in the service. It’s one of those things that you can’t be thankful enough for.
That is one of the first things my family, my mother and my grandfather, had taught me about acting: ‘Use your eyes!’ Not being able to do that physical aspect of it, and having to put it all into your voice? That was a little bit of a challenge.
My mother is Brazilian, and her grandfather was Italian.
I was Everett LeRoi Jones. My grandfather’s name was Everett.
I think fathers, mothers, grandfathers, grandmothers – we should look at what young people are saying to us.
It’s in the history books, the Holocaust. It’s just a phrase. And the truth is it happened yesterday. It happened to my mother. I never met my grandmothers or my grandfathers. They were all wiped up in the gas chambers of Nazi Germany.
It’s my name on the ballot, and it’s me running this race. I’m the one doing this. Not my father and not my grandfather and not my great-uncle and not President Kennedy.
My grandfather, as I said, was industrious. He’d had a variety of jobs and decided sometime in the 1940s that he would never work for anyone. He was also a very independent man.
I am lucky because I can – and I like to – mix the beautiful Caraceni jackets I inherited from my grandfather with a pair of Tsubi jeans or wear a favorite pin-striped suit from him for more formal occasions. I’m crazy about pinstripes and vintage fifties fabrics.
I began drawing as a very young child and had a grandfather who experimented with photography, so those things constituted my first exposure to art.
My particular lifetime, my individual profile, represents something very basic to African-American history and culture because I was a second generation immigrant, so to speak, from the South. My grandfather was born in South Carolina – well, both grandfathers were born in the South.
Whenever I start a book, I swear it’s going to be a short one. But then it’s, ‘Who was his grandfather? And how did he get there in the first place? And what kind of animals is he chasing?’
I was raised in Mississippi, in a family and a community that identified as black, and I have the stories and the experiences to go with it. One of my great-great grandfathers was killed by a gang of white Prohibition patrollers.
Unfortunately, neither of my grandfathers were alive by the time I decided I wanted to write a book. I wish I had asked them questions when they were around, but I was too young and it remains a regret to this day.
My grandfather was the minister at the Lutheran church. My dad owned a car dealership in town. My mom was the consummate volunteer and cheerleader for me.
My grandmother, grandfather, my mom – we’ve always been driven by laughter. It’s what held us together. Thanksgivings, any kind of family get-together, we usually end up in tears.
When I was little, I wanted to be a doctor. I was really interested in gore. My grandfather was an orthopedic surgeon and he had a lot of books in his library that I would just pore over. A lot of them had really horrible pictures of deformities.
I grew up in Orangeburg, South Carolina, which has the proud distinction of being the home to two of the eight Historically Black Colleges and Universities in the state: South Carolina State University and Claflin University. When I was a kid riding around town with my grandfather, we often drove by the colleges.
The most ironic thing is my grandfather has his masters in music composition; he was a jazz composer. My dad was a musician, too. He played more, like, soul music.
I don’t know who my grandfather was; I am much more concerned to know what his grandson will be.
I want to be able to experience everything. I want to experience being a husband, experience being a father, experience, maybe, hopefully, someday being a grandfather, and all those things. I want that experience. When I die, I want to be exhausted.
I come from a blue collar family, but my personal life isn’t. I didn’t get the gene that my grandfather had in spades. He was a local hero. Built the church that I went to. Built the house I grew up in. Steamfitter, pipefitter, electrician, mechanic and plumber. I wanted to do those things. But it just didn’t come easy.
To me, a Harris Tweed jacket is the kind of thing you should be able to have in your closet years from now – possibly it was your father’s jacket or, even better, your grandfather’s jacket.
As my Sicilian grandfather used to say, you get more flies with honey than with vinegar, right?
My father Ted fought in North Africa, Italy, and Germany during World War II. My grandfather survived the horrors of the trenches in World War I. I truly believe that one of the E.U.’s greatest achievements is that it has kept its members out of conflict in Europe.
My grandfather, K.R. Balan, a pioneer in the film industry, wanted me to try my hand at acting.
My grandfather talked about James Dean; they were both very much into method acting.
Born to a tribal Bedouin family of nomadic desert shepherds in the region of Tripoli, Gaddafi was profoundly anti-colonialist. It is affirmed that his paternal grandfather died fighting against the Italian invaders when Libya was invaded by them in 1911.
My grandfather didn’t come to Canada for his own sake. He didn’t leave behind his family to cross the Atlantic and be knocked to the canvas. He came here so that his son, my father, would have a better life.
My grandfather lived to be late 90s on one side and on the other side, 70s or something. And my father died young, at 63. But he didn’t take very good care of himself.
While we are originally from Mangalore, my grandfather had migrated to Burma from where he returned to join the Indian National Army and settled in Mumbai, where I was born and brought up.
I blame my grandfather 100 percent for his oldest son’s death. I don’t think there’s any ambiguity there.
My grandfather and my uncle both died from colorectal cancer, my dad almost died from it and I have the gene for it.
My grandfather was a police officer. He taught Dad about lie detectors and police interrogation methods, so Dad got this old World War II lie detector and used it on us regularly. He was obsessed with the truth.
My grandfather was hit over the head by a crane boom in Seattle. Some of the family claimed he was never a violent, crazy person before that. Some say he was. It depends who you believe.
My grandfather was Catholic; my grandmother, Jewish. Crossing over from Bavaria, as immigrants to the United States, the ship started to sink. My grandmother jumped overboard. My grandfather followed, to save this girl he had never met.
Art was a way of life in my family. My grandfather, N.C. Wyeth, who died a year before I was born, had been a prominent painter. So was my father, Andrew. My two aunts and two of my uncles also earned a living as painters.
On my 14th birthday, my grandfather and my grandmother gave me the best birthday present ever: a drafting table that I have worked on ever since.
My grandfather and my father had wheat ranches, so we had quite a few trucks around and a lot of mules. Talk about horsepower – we had mule power.
My mum left my dad when I was six months old, so I don’t know him at all. I had no male figures in my life, really. I had my godfather, but he’s more like a grandfather, so I was quite sheltered. I’ve never tried to find my father.
Playing with my grandfather, grandmother and my parents, I came to music pretty naturally.
There are now grandmothers and grandfathers coming to see us because they are of that age, they grew up in the ’50s and ’60s and they bring their sons and their daughters to hear the songs they heard when they were young.
I’m from Chicago. My grandfather was a policeman, and my aunts are married to policemen.
My grandfathers on both sides were entrepreneurs.
My grandfather, who brought me up, was a coal miner. I visited the mines with him. I remember it vividly. It was horrible. I’m glad I didn’t go into the family business.
We didn’t have much, but I was raised to believe if you had books, you had a lot. My grandfather and my parents made me and my twin brother Kiel read at least a book a week.
I had no specific bent toward science until my grandfather died of cancer. I decided nobody should suffer that much.
I grew up in Oregon, where as a teenager I worked with my grandfather Axel on his i shing boat at the mouth of the Columbia River.
The luckiest person in the world is somebody who is born into a small, shabby-genteel town on a major railway connection with 24,000 souls and a bird sanctuary and whose grandfather owns a farm and whose father owns a business -whose family is mildly prosperous but not rich, which means you can leave the town.
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.
We moved to South Central Iowa to the farm where my dad had grown up, where my grandfather had grown up. The house was actually, it was a tiny little house. It was about 600 square feet and it was built by my great-grandfather. And that’s the house I spent time in as a child.
My grandfather pioneered exploration of what he called ‘our water planet,’ then my father sought to understand the human connection, and now, as part of the third generation, I’m dedicated to not only raising awareness but also to empowering people to take action.
I am ever mindful of the legacy of my grandfather, the founder of this Kingdom, who had said to me that he perceived his life as a link in a continuous chain of those who served our nation and that he expected me to be a new and strong link in the same chain.
A publisher friend of mine suggested that I write a book about my grandfather, who had just died. I had nothing else to fill my empty days with, so I started work on this book. While researching it – watching lots of movies, talking to moviemakers – I became interested in movies and started making documentaries.
I have a ranch in Montana, but it’s not a real working ranch. I’ve always liked the outdoors. I come from Texas. My grandfather was a farmer; that’s as close as I come.
I don’t want to do a biopic. If there was one biopic I would do, it would be about my grandfather, the late N. T. Rama Rao. But his aura and charisma is completely different, and I am no match for him.
My grandfather’s family used to own a pasta factory in Naples and they would go door-to-door selling their pasta. So his love of food came from his parents, which was then passed down to my mother and then again to me.
I wrote a techno song about the four things I love in Germany to make myself happy, which are my grandfather, my two poodle pets, bread, and a strange but delicious Turkish dish called Doener Kebab.
My grandfather was a civil servant. He was honest, so it would be unfair to say we enjoyed the perils of richness.
When I visit any cathedral, it reminds me of being with my grandparents. They weren’t particularly religious, but my grandfather was obsessed with architecture.
In terms of the first Christmas when I met everybody, I went over to Nick’s grandfather’s house where they were having the big Christmas dinner, and they have this tradition of this thing called oyster stew.
I confess that as a young boy, Sunday was not my favorite day. Grandfather shut down the action. We didn’t have any transportation. We couldn’t drive the car. He wouldn’t even let us start the motor. We couldn’t ride the horses, or the steers, or the sheep.
My grandfather Frank Lloyd Wright wore a red sash on his wedding night. That is glamour!
Real Madrid? There is no agreement, but I promised my grandfather I would play there one day. Why wouldn’t I want to discover new things? As I’ve said several times, I’d like to play in Spain and have good weather for once in my life!
My grandfather bought me my first Marvel comic book when I was six years old, and since then, it has been an ongoing love. It was an ‘X-Men’ comic book.
My grandfather was a faith healer and medium, and he always encouraged faith in the unseen. I believe in fortune tellers.
My grandfather was Orthodox, and he was religious, but neither of my parents were. Of course, as they got older, it seems like they get more religious the older they get, even though they’re still not practicing Jews.
As a father and grandfather, I have witnessed firsthand the joy of new life entering the world. I know the pain and apprehension that goes along with premature births and birth defects.
I always think of my grandfather as the original foodie. He was the slowest eater. He savored everything. Even when everyone was gone from the table, he was still eating.
Charlie Crist has gone through his entire political life with one stump speech – his grandfather polishing shoes.
Yes, my grandfather worked with Thomas Edison on the electric car, and he sold electric cars at the 1900 World’s Fair in Paris.
I rebelled against all form of authority, against my grandfather, my step-father, the Church, the police, the government, the bosses. Everything male that was there, and was determining my life.
I was interested in public service, and looking back at my father, my grandfather and two great-grandfathers, well, yeah, that’s what they did, too. And I think public service, like journalism, done right is a really honourable, really important profession.
The public library is where I studied. It’s where my grandfather taught himself English.
My dad grew up really poor in Mississippi. I paid attention to that because I thought that’s a healthier thing to pay attention to than, like, some statue of a great-great-great grandfather who has no connection to my life.
My mum left her job to allow me to pursue my dreams, coming along with me. But the person who really inspired me was my grandfather. He’ll always have a very special place in my heart.
My grandfather allowed as how I might even live long enough to see a Mars landing. I haven’t, of course, except in fiction, including my own, and strongly doubt that I ever will.
My grandfather was from Aberdare. He was a coal miner who emigrated and then continued mining in Pennsylvania.
I remember the words of my grandmother who died at 102. I remember my great mother, Grand Brika, who died at the age of 106. They talked to us all the time. And my grandmother even lied to me. She said there was royalty. She said that my great-great-great grandfather was the king of the outer Thembu.
I learned to speak Italian, somewhat. Definitely enough to get around in Italy. My grandfather always used to swear at my grandmother in Italian.
You know, I’m a father. I’m a brother. I’m a son. And I’m a grandfather. So many times I have to be the intermediary, the person to referee and help solve disputes and to protect and to guide.
When I was a kid, my grandparents were Greek immigrants on my father’s side. My grandfather used to read me Greek myths, in which there are a great many goddesses and stories of strong women. And I was entranced by them. Then I started reading science fiction very young, and I loved it.
My father was a Victorian product. He didn’t marry until he was over 40. I knew him more as a grandfather than a father. You didn’t lie or cheat with him. I would never have defied my father.
It’s not normal when you finish playing collegiate ball to be able to jump right into the NFL and work for Jon Gruden. That doesn’t happen if you don’t have your grandfather that has the connections and has earned the respect around this league. And for that, I feel very fortunate.
I think the grandfather of the set is the director. He needs to have authority, to do what people want. A warm grandfather; he needs to know his job, to be open.
My father was a very good golfer and he got me started early. My grandfather played, too. It was just something that the Kroft family did. I kind of grew up on the golf course.
I was willing to accept a bad reputation if I deserved it, but it was going to be based on my actions, not on anybody’s history. I’m not running from my family – I couldn’t embrace my family more. But I wanted to work in an industry where I could define myself, not be defined by my grandfather’s history.
I don’t mind playing even a grandfather provided the role is good.
I was at a ballpark as much as I was in school. I was on a basketball court or football field as much as I was in school, so I definitely was receiving mentorship when it came to coaches, my father, my grandfather, and my uncles.
I used to have a lovely wallet with lots of different compartments where I kept photographs of my grandmother, grandfather and friends. It was stolen one night when I was out in Edinburgh, and I never got it back.
My grandfather, my dad’s dad, he was a lawyer. He was a state legislator. He was the publisher of Oregon’s second largest newspaper. He was a pretty amazing guy.
Always remember the last words of my grandfather, who said: ‘A truck!’
Summer I was 13, my grandfather and my father taught me how to play golf. I took lessons that summer, and I played every day that summer. I probably would’ve kept playing, except I realized that girls don’t watch golf; they watch tennis. So I let my golf game go dormant and started playing tennis.
Without question, my grandfather’s example of public service throughout his life inspired Dad later to run for office himself. Wherever he went, whatever he did, Prescott Bush had plenty of admirers.
My grandfather was an amazing cap-in-hand guy.
I’m lucky: almost all my family has lived to be very old. I have one grandfather who lived to be 100.
My grandfather was a Tuskegee Airman. He flew with the 100th Fighter Squadron.
I’ve always loved 3D. In fact, as a kid, I was exposed to 3D at an early age because my grandfather was a specialist of 3D in cinematheques. And then my cousin put it in ‘Science of Sleep’ with toilet paper tube cities. But he was a specialist and I always wanted to do something in 3D.
When Mike Tyson was only 18, his managers used to market him on posters, reminding you that if your grandfather had missed Joe Louis, or your father Muhammad Ali, don’t you miss Tyson.
My life and the life of my family has to do with exploration, with adventure. My grandfather was the first man in the stratosphere, and my father was the first to touch the deepest point in the ocean… For me, adventure and exploration is something in the blood.
I love blues. My grandfather did blues.
At school, I’d be the dude singing to the girls, always up in the auditorium, in the lunch room singing Christmas carols, in the halls between class. I was always singing, and same thing with my grandfather. The apple doesn’t fall too far from the tree; you know how that goes.
My grandfather on my paternal side, Richard Frazier, was born in the late 1850s and, therefore, was born into slavery but was a sharecropper in South Carolina for his entire life.
My ancestry is really weird, because my great grandfather was from the Cayman Islands, and then his father was from England. But I lose track at that point.
I started in London, as a kid. My mother knew I had sort of an inbred talent. She was an actress, so I inherited it from her. But I think I got a lot of it from my grandfather, who was a great politician.
It’s kind of hard in politics to forget that you’re a Democrat or a Republican and remember that you’re a father and a grandfather… and that they’re entitled to more than they’re getting.
My father and my grandfather always watch my films and share their feedback with me. It helps me a lot in my own career.
My grandfather is from Peshawar; he was born there.
I remember, as a kid, my grandfather would grab my temples and say, ‘You’ve got to focus, Jake. You’ve got to focus.’
Bernard Vonnegut, named for his paternal grandfather, was born August 29, 1914. He was a serious-looking little boy, even in informal photographs.
All my life, I’ve wanted to write a book inspired by my relationship with my grandfather. Basically, my grandfather was a guy who everybody in the family regarded as disagreeable at best. But I loved him intensely. He was wonderful to me.
‘Frances’ is a longtime family name on my dad’s side. My grandfather, father, brother, and my daughter’s name is Frances.
My grandfather learned to swim in the Navy by getting thrown off a boat into the ocean. He had to learn fast. And I think I learn pretty well under pressure.
In 1997, I, along with 200 other young ophthalmologists formed the National Board of Ophthalmology to protest the American Board of Ophthalmology’s decision to grandfather in the older ophthalmologists and not require them to recertify.
When I spent time with my father, it wasn’t playing ball in the back yard. I came to his office and listened to him do business or sat in on meetings. I walked job sites. On Saturday, we’d see my grandfather in Queens for a couple hours, and then he’d say, ‘Let’s go collect rent!’
I was an overly young father, is the most polite way of putting it. I think I was rather immature and all I can say is that I think I’ve made a much better grandfather… I don’t think I was ready to be a father to be honest.
My mother was a product of World War II. My grandfather was on leave in Edinburgh when he met my grandmother.
My daddy was a minister, my grandfather was a voodoo priest, my uncle was a mason; I was raised with a lot of studies.
No one likes to play grandfather, especially when you are a father of two toddlers in real life.
Whenever people would speculate about the death of my grandfather it was always this very retributive thing. That they were going to picket his funeral after all the things that he had done to so many other people. That vindictiveness is obviously completely understandable. It would make perfect sense.
I realized that my grandfather walked with Martin Luther King forty years ago. That was his dream. And in his little way, he helped us get closer to where we are today.
I thought theater people wouldn’t see me if I hadn’t trained. I didn’t want to just be the Brideshead guy, to spend the rest of my life wearing waistcoats. I got the chance to try everything. Not just Romeos, but pimps and grandfathers and even one role as a woman in a Naomi Wallace play called Slaughter City.
My parents came from very humble families. My grandfather had a construction business coming from farmland, and my grandmother could never read or write. We were very spoiled. We had a nice house – and then, all of a sudden, we had nothing.
I’ve been on my grandfather’s boat, Calypso, twice in my life. My mother raised me in a pretty typical middle-class life.
Black men and women were not allowed to register to vote. My own mother, my own father, my grandfather and my uncles and aunts could not register to vote because each time they attempted to register to vote, they were told they could not pass the literacy test.
I always looked up to my grandfather. He wore Italian zip-up CAT boots, and he had a moustache which he waxed into a twirl – now that is worth looking up to.
My mother told me I was begging her to be an actor when I was four. My father and my grandfather saw at least one or two movies a week; they were film buffs, so I guess it just rubbed off on me. And now it’s kind of become a way of life for me.
When I was about 3, my grandfather used to give me and my sister a nickel to sit out on the front porch with him and sing songs.
My grandfather didn’t have any patience for little kids or their needs.
I know that some people view me as a bit manufactured. But I can’t be Whitney Houston: somebody who is polite and perfect and appeals to your mother and your grandfather.
I was born May 31, 1911, in Paris. My parents owned a small cheese shop, and my maternal grandfather was a carpentry worker. I thus came from what is commonly known as the working class.
When writing music for the ‘Kaddish,’ I evoked the prayers that were sung in Eastern Galicia, Ukraine and Romania. I was advised by my late friend, Boris Carmeli… He would sing me various melodies that were sung by his grandfather, thus they had to be at least as old as the mid-19th century.
My grandfather is a retired Marine, and I’ve always had a great deal of respect for anyone who serves our country.
My grandfather arrived in Houston in 1942 as a refugee from Nazi Germany. He had lost everything – his profession, his language, his money – but the city welcomed him, as it has hundreds of thousands of immigrants over the years.
For one year, I was Keith Mitchell Coogan on my headshots. The next year, I was just Keith Coogan. And I have gone by that ever since, maybe 1984 or 1985. That is my mother’s maiden name, and it was out of reverence for my grandfather.
The earliest memories I have of the ocean are actually stories – stories from my grandfather, the legendary ocean explorer and conservationist Jacques Cousteau. My passion for ocean conservation stems from learning at a very young age that we’re all connected; we’re all in this together.
My grandfather was running Hillcrest Country Club, and that’s where a whole group of Hollywood comedians hung out.
My grandfather on my mother’s side was a professor of mechanical engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; my other grandfather was a lawyer, and one time Speaker of the Tennessee House of Representatives.
Growing up in Chadds Ford, Pa., I shuttled between studio space in my parents’ house and my grandfather’s studio just up the hill. It was a solitary childhood, but I loved it.
The thing that I hate the most is when people have prejudice – when they see me as the granddaughter of Benito Mussolini and not as Alessandra. That, really, I don’t like. I didn’t know my grandfather. I am me.
My mother and my great-aunt told me stories, like how when my grandfather first met my grandmother at a party, he noticed her long legs and was like, ‘Woo woo!’ I like to incorporate those stories into my music. They just seem to fit.
The integration of a headgear in professional boxing would do so much to make it safer for young men. They could go into the sport, make a lot of money and then come out and be good grandfathers.
My grandfather gave me inspiration to cook, and love food and flavors. My Aunt Raffie, gave me creativity and the inspiration to create new things. My mother inspires me to find simplicity in food.
I’ve always been into dressing nicely. My dad’s really into fashion, also. We’ll always go out and buy stuff. He has his own style and I have my own style, but it’s a shared thing. Same thing with my grandfather; he was really into his style, so it’s just sort of been passed down, I think.
My grandparents were far more English in their manners than they were Chinese. For example, we spoke English at home, had afternoon tea every day, and my grandfather, who attended university in Scotland, would smoke his pipe after dinner.
My own grandfathers were a submarine commander and a ‘desert rats’ tank operator in the Second World War.
My grandfather was the architect behind NAFTA, and that has created so much economic opportunity, not only in our country, but in Latin America.
Writing songs is an essential part of my life: my mother teaches piano, and I have inherited my grandparents’ passion for music, especially from my grandfather Tommy, who was a great drummer. It’s no coincidence that I play the drums best, but I am also good with the guitar and the piano.
I’m pretty blessed when it comes to clear skin. I owe that to being Cape Verdian. My whole family has great skin. My grandfather is 80 but doesn’t look a day over 50. And we all love the sun, too, so blessed is an understatement!
My grandfather, born in 1865, was a copper miner from the age of 10. The air down the mines was poisoned with arsenic, and working conditions were horrific. They only had candles for light, so they worked in a pitch-black environment.
I have played all generations in reel and real life – grandson, son, father, and grandfather – and each relationship has taught me something.
Most kids just follow the cycle. My grandfather didn’t finish high school. My father didn’t, and I didn’t. But you can break the cycle. You can have a successful marriage and be a good father.
My grandfather, I don’t think was really, had real positive feelings towards anybody except perhaps Donald.
I’m not that hands-on as a grandfather.
My grandparents went through a bad experience themselves; they invested money in a church and got burned – the pastor had his own agenda – and my grandfather lost interest in the church after that. That was when I had the option to not go. ‘Grandpa ain’t going; I’m gonna stay with Grandpa.’
My grandfather was a survivor of the Death March and his war buddies were among our neighbors. Where we lived in San Francisco, there was a cultural center where the Filipinos congregate to have parties and to celebrate Bataan Day.
My childhood dream? To play at Real Madrid. In 2014, before he died, I promised my grandfather who was from Avila, 110 kilometers from Madrid, that I would play there. It will be complicated, but it sits in a corner of my head.
My grandfather was extremely dark and from Puerto Rico, but his brother had blond hair and blue eyes. There are so many different shades, and I think Hollywood has yet to realize that.
My grandfather taught me generosity. He sold snow cones in Harlem. I went with him at 5 and he let me hand out the change and snow cones. I learned a lot in the couple of years that we did that.
We have found fathers and grandfathers of children with autism are more likely to be engineers.
My dad’s father would take me to WWE shows when I was younger, and my other grandfather, my mom’s dad, would watch wrestling with me at the house. They just really enjoyed it. Unfortunately, they both passed away before I signed with WWE.
I want you to think about your grandfather’s integrity and grit when you’re staring at the ceiling of your barracks room, but I also want you to think a little deeper.
I’m so American that I had grandfathers who actually fought a battle against each other.
My grandfather was a voodoo priest. A lot of my life dealt with spirituality. I can close my eyes and remember where I come from.
I have family that are vets of the military. My grandfather served as well.
Both of my grandfathers served in World War II, both in the Pacific. One wouldn’t talk about it, and one would.
My mother was a minister, so I grew up in a church. My grandfather was a minister; there are a bunch of ministers in my family.
I have been grateful for the influence of my grandmother and my grandfather in my life. I remember my grandmother as a queenly woman. My father could be stern, and my grandparents would remind him that we were just boys.
My son Cary’s generation likely won’t know who my father was, but it’s something nice for him that his grandfather was an icon. I had one chance to pass along that name.
I come from a family that has been here for almost 200 years. My ancestors started a very dangerous gunpowder business in 1802, and my great- grandfather and his father were both killed in gunpowder explosions.
Yes, I’m half Italian. So my grandfather speaks heavy Italian… and I couldn’t understand a word he said.
Being a father of three children and grandfather to nine, I do think that this thing called ‘parenting’ is becoming increasingly difficult.
At one point, when I was 20 and living in Kentucky, I got shot – it was a land dispute over six inches of property that ran a hundred yards through my grandfather’s land. It was really over the honor of my family and that of another family.
The most important thing my grandfather taught me was that the most noble way to use your skills, intellect and energy is to defend the marginalized against those with the greatest power – and that the resulting animosity from those in power is a badge of honor.
I never truly got to know my grandfather before he passed away, but he inspires me to search more deeply to understand myself.
When my grandfather was born, there was no healthcare. There were no airplanes. There were no boats. There were no trains. There were no communications. No Internet. No widespread knowledge. It will be a completely different world but a much better place in a hundred years.
I was very fortunate that all my holidays I’d spend with my grandfather, experiencing a much more traditional way of life and listening to these wonderful stories, which I now feel are such an important part of Indian thinking.
For me, Lord Mountbatten represented the grandfather I never had.
