My dad said, ‘Stay humble, and you gotta work harder than everybody else.’ My mom said, ‘Always be yourself.’ She always told me only God can judge me.
My dad’s Irish, so I was visiting Ireland a lot as a kid, so it’s not totally foreign to me.
My dad is really just lazy. He has nothing, I feel, to offer this world.
I love my dad, and I’m proud to be his daughter.
No one was more important than my mom and dad. I know they are watching from a place up in heaven here today to make sure all their kids are doing good.
I think the best of us comes when we are working together collectively. And it doesn’t mean that we can’t disagree. We’ve got to learn, as Dad taught us, to disagree without being disagreeable.
My dad used to say to me, ‘You look more like me than I do.’
You have to be confident in who you are and what you’re doing. Of course, you try to evolve. I would never tell you, ‘Today is the best I will ever be.’ I’m always trying to be a better chef, a better dad, a better person.
My parents are not theatrical people, but my dad took me to the theater.
I gotta be honest with you. I’m kind of jealous of the way my dad gets to talk to my mom sometimes. Where are all those old-school women you can just take your day out on? When did they stop making those angels?
I lost contact with my father for many years because of apartheid. For, like, six years, I didn’t see my dad. And, now, this was the six years of being a teenager.
My dad is always there for me, and no matter how busy, he always makes it a point to answer my calls. I think he knows what is best for me better than me and is very involved in planning my career. Feel blessed to have a dad like him.
I love eating at my dad’s pub, the Queens Arms in Kilburn. It does a traditional Albanian spinach pie.
With my mom and dad around, I became a child yet again.
My dad was a football player – a soccer player – for Manchester United, and I loved playing football, but I also happened to be the guy in class who was pretty good at sight reading. My teacher gave me scripts, and I was very comfortable.
Being an only child, I didn’t have any other family but my mom and dad really, since the rest of my family lived quite far away from London.
Growing up, my dad was ‘get a real job, don’t go pursuing your dreams, that’s how you become homeless.’ So, do I pick my family or do I pick my own happiness, and how much does my own happiness depend on my family?
My first publication was a haiku in a children’s magazine when I was 9 years old. I received one dollar for it! I gave the check to my dad for Christmas, and he framed it and hung it over his desk.
I learned to hear silence. That’s the kind of life I lived: simple. I learned to see things in people around me, in my mom, dad, brothers and sisters.
The reason I made my stage name Kali Uchis is because it’s still me in the sense that, my dad called me ‘Kali Uchis’ my whole life. It’s still something I’ve been called since I was a baby. It’s still me.
I do my work and do the best I can. I’m quite happy with my anonymity. All I can ever hope for is that I continue to do great work that will be remembered, and I leave my imprint so that my son can say proudly, ‘That’s my dad!’
My dad was my best friend and greatest role model. He was an amazing dad, coach, mentor, soldier, husband and friend.
My dad raised me with some good advice: ‘Always tell the truth. Always shoot from the hip. You might not have many friends, but you’ll never have enemies, because people will always know where you’re coming from.’
Nowadays, if you have a mustache, people look at you like you’re crazy. But when I was growing up, I never saw my dad without a mustache.
People say the top part of my face looks like my dad’s and the bottom part like my mom’s. I have his eyes and her nose and mouth.
