Rick Nielsen Quotes

I don't know what 15-year-old doesn't have a desire to separate themselves from their parents and prove their independence.

Children need parents who will let them grow up to be themselves, but parents often have personal agendas they try to impose on their children.

I love my father, but I have worked to develop a separate and distinct identity in different projects I have worked on.

My dad is a civil engineer, and my mom is a stay-at-home mom. The fact that my parents weren't really involved in music was kind of good, because it meant that I had something that was private and personal.

No matter how good you are, at some point your kids are gonna have to create their own independence and think that Mom and Dad aren't cool, just to establish themselves. That's what adolescence is about. They're gonna go through that no matter what.

I mean my mother always wanted us to be individuals. She always instilled that into our brains which was incredibly painful for an adolescent to deal with.

When we're growing up there are all sorts of people telling us what to do when really what we need is space to work out who to be.

I was kind of smart enough when I was young, 14 or 15 years old, to realize that if you're ever going to do anything and step out of the shadow of your own dad - not only in hockey, but in life itself - you're going to have to learn you're Brett and not 'Bobby's son.'

I like writing about teenagers because it's a time of great change and conflict. Up to then, you accept what your parents tell you.

The thing about adolescence is that you are emerging from a state of obscurity. You are coming out into the world from your family. Your family can seem normal because it is your family and all you know, but in fact it is a mess.

I realize that when I moved out of my father's house I shocked and frightened him because I needed a room of my own, a space of my own to reinvent myself.

I think when you're 14 years old, I think you're sort of looking for markers that prove you're an adult and you're independent of your parents.

The delicate balance of mentoring someone is not creating them in your own image, but giving them the opportunity to create themselves.

I deliberately went to boarding school. It was my choice. My mum was abroad and I wanted to wean myself off being dependent. It was a very important time for me to be able to create my own individual, independent life; just as a way of growing up.

I was in high school, and when you get to be 14, 15, you start to feel a little more like your own person so that you can assert your adulthood a little bit.

I think that parents grow up with an idea of what they want their kids to be like - and then their kids grow up to be people of themselves, of their own.

I didn't put out this album because I wanted everybody to know I was grown up. I'm 21 and that's not grown up.

As a teenager especially, I just wanted to do my thing and not be noticed.

The challenging part of parenting for me is to make sure that an individual person is an individual and not some sort of cookie-cutter version of me. At the same time, I want to make sure that I impart my sense of the world as an adult.

I think I look more like me than my father's daughter now.

My father was an amazing man. No person is perfect, and no father-son relationship is perfect. He wanted me to live my life my way and never think about what he would have done or what he would have wanted to do.

When I was 16, I was doing what was popular. If I could go back, I would tell myself to not be afraid to be alone and not to follow others so much.

I've been able to define who I am and my brother is able to do his thing.

I think there is a time in every person's life where they have to let their parents go and figure out what being a parent means for themselves.

No, I am not my mother. I am deeply, endlessly grateful for what she did and who she was, but I am a different kind of person.