John Cleese Quotes

Mum's serial misbehavior over the years had driven me, despairing, to write her scolding - occasionally scalding letters.

My father was a pedant and a bully who cared about nobody, and I was not to see him until I was eighteen.

I have a very non-existent, dysfunctional relationship with my biological mother.

I stopped loving my father a long time ago. What remained was the slavery to a pattern.

I hated my father long before I knew there was a word for hate.

The real demon in my life is my father.

I would have gone home to my mother, but I'm not that crazy about my mother.

Great dad. Yeah, he would ask me for money on birthdays and, you know, inappropriate times. And I just wrote him off like, 'You're not a father.' I just learned you cannot emotionally invest in people who are not attainable.

I don't have anything against my mom, but my family has no emotional connection to each other.

I never liked my father. He really was a dullard and misanthrope. My mother and he were married for 22, years and it was an ill match. She encouraged me to be a writer. She opened her home to black friends, and this was the 1950s. She didn't care later when I write about her.

My relationship with my mom is really bad.

My stepfather was fond of letting me know, quote, 'I ain't your... damn daddy.' That was something that was painful, to put it mildly.

My father never liked me or my sister, and he never liked our mother either, after an initial infatuation, and in fact, he never liked anyone at all after an hour or two, no, no one except a stooge.

'Like Father, Like Son' gave me the opportunity to show when it is not good with a father.

I'm just looking at how my dad's treating me and how my mom's treating me, and my mom has kind of backstabbed me a couple times.

I can't have my family in my life because they are abusive, and I don't have control over that. There is an abusive culture in my family, and I have to turn away from it.

My friends were raised by their maids. They didn't see their fathers, who used to travel for work, and there were facades of family vacations. I have grown up to be completely intolerant of fake relationships. That's because of how my parents were.

I love my mum and dad, but they were shocking providers and carers.

I have a stepfather who isn't around just because he wants to be with my mother and sisters. There's more to it. He's around for the money. He's proven that in a lot of ways. And my mom loves him. And that's not wrong. But when it interferes with my career and my business and becomes a threat to me, there's a problem.

it seemed to me that I had never met another person on earth as discouraging to my happiness as my father. and it appeared that I had the same effect upon him.

I am a hopeless mamma's boy.

Children begin by loving their parents; after a time they judge them; rarely, if ever, do they forgive them.

I never thought about the relationship of my mother, my family, to the content of my work.

When you have parents who are a little out of their minds, somebody has to take responsibility.

My family - it wasn't an abusive family - they meant well, but they were in their own world.