Terry Gross Quotes

When your parents are Middle Eastern immigrants, you have three choices. You can become a doctor, a lawyer or an engineer.

Every culture feels like their parents are the most stringent as far as, "We came to this country to work hard, we want you to be a doctor or a lawyer."

The announcement that I was going to be an actor was made when was I was 10 years old. And that didn't go down all that well, but I had a lot of years to butter up my parents. My parents have mellowed quite a bit, but, growing up, there was a sense that the only real professions were doctor, engineer, lawyer. Those were your choices.

My mum thought my TV and film addiction was laziness. If you're an immigrant, you know you'll never be an accepted part of society, but you hope your children will be, and you try to make them essential to the community in a practical way - being a doctor or a lawyer. Acting was beyond their comprehension.

My dad, of course, like a lot of Asian parents, wanted me to be an engineer or doctor and never could understand why I would want to be a lawyer. And then, when I first said I wanted to run for office, he thought that was absolutely insane.

I'm the daughter of two Indian immigrant doctors, and I have an older sister and younger brother, and none of us have pursued medicine as a career. We're all over the artistic side of things.

When I was a child, writing was the worst possible choice of a career in my family.

My dad was Chinese-American and very conservative when it came to his family's futures. He said if I wanted to have a secure job, I should go into science. So I did what Dad said and went to medical school, but the writing bug never left me.

When my mother read 'The Joy Luck Club', she was always complaining to me how she had to tell her friends that, no, she was not the mother or any of the mothers in the book.

As a first-generation American, my parents expected that I would go on to have pretty tactical higher-education-type jobs - doctor, lawyer, engineer. Those were the three options. My dad was not at all open to the idea that there would not be a higher education in my future.

I'm Greek-American, and I come from an immigrant-type background, and Greek-American parents want you to be a doctor or a lawyer. Because that's how you make money, and it's very respectable.

I came to America when I was six. In true African form, my parents wanted me to be a doctor or lawyer or engineer.

Because my parents are Muslim, there's no doubt they wished I would marry someone Muslim.

A lot of people do what their families do. Imagine if everyone in the family is a doctor and they decide to become an actor. Then people have to make those choices for themselves and their art and what they believe in.

I come from a family of lawyers. I was expected to be a professional of some sort, not an artist. I was never uplifted for my art.

Your fear that your parents will actually kill you for dropping out of college is something that I think a lot of children of immigrants would maybe relate to.

My parents would have loved it if my brother or I had become a doctor or lawyer.

When I was a child, writing was the worst possible choice of a career in my family. My father had always identified himself as a writer to my mother when they met. When they met, he was writing this great novel, there was no doubt about it.

Whenever I get married, it will be a Bengali wedding. If I won't have a Bengali wedding, my mother won't come. She has warned me. So, I am going to have a Bengali wedding for sure.

My father in the film - which we probably haven't seen in previous movies, and in British Asian movies you could probably count on one hand - he says exactly why, actually why he's frightened for his daughter. He came to this country, England, and had a bit of a crappy time.

In many Asian households, to not go on to higher education, that's like a big no-no. I know my parents' discouragement was for my own protection, and I'm really close to them now, but they didn't understand that there is value in this. That's because they didn't know.

My parents wanted their daughters to reach their full potential. I joke that they said, 'We left our homeland so you could pursue your dreams - as long as you're a lawyer, a doctor, or an engineer.'

My mother was against me being an artist. She just wanted me to marry a rich man.

My parents are desperate, they keep saying: 'Please stop doing these angsty roles; make it easier for us.' So, yeah, I'd love to do some comedy.

My mother and father raised their eyebrows at first when I said I wanted to be an actor because I was in this industrial city. My dad had done a bit of boxing on the side, but he was a welder first and foremost. I was 17, and I said, 'I want to be an actor.' They worried it was a waste of time.