I always read all these books about the slaves. My mother is very educated. My father would talk to us like we were grown men. We never knew what he was talking about half the time.
Jesus went to the cross for sins He didn't commit. Hello! You can carry a grudge just thinking about that, but don't do it. He knew what He was doing. It was His choice, and He did it willingly. It was the will of the Father, and He always did the will of God without complaint. So what is it that we have to complain about?
My father was a guitar player, and I was raised with a super high standard of what good guitar playing was.
I was born in Karachi, where my father used to work in the sales department of a pharmaceutical company. The nature of his job required him to travel, so we moved to Athens, Dubai, Saudi Arabia, and Riyadh and then went to Manchester during the Gulf War, moving back to Lahore closer to my father's retirement.
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.
I'm sick of very white teeth and lots of gymnasium practice. I'm bored, you know, send in the next one. I wanted a real man that I could believe was my brother, my father, you know, my next-door neighbor - a real person.
After finishing the gymnasium in Muenchen with 9 years of Latin and 6 years of ancient Greek, history and philosophy, I decided to become a physicist. The great theoretical physicist Arnold Sommerfeld, an university colleague of my late father, advised me to begin with an apprenticeship in precision mechanics.
My father's family can be traced back to 1400. I've been told by gypsies that there is unmistakeably gypsy blood in me. Lee is a gypsy name, you know.
I discovered that there is Indian blood in my ancestry on my father's side - a fact that had not been talked about in my family. No wonder I've often been cast in exotic roles - Indian princesses, Russian revolutionaries, Algerians, Gypsies and Greeks.
It's extraordinary what children put up with. I happened to see two of my uncles put my father up against the wall of my grandmother's house and knock his teeth out, because he'd been unpleasant to my mother. The next day I went upstairs and found my father making a rather half-hearted attempt to gas himself.
A father draws boundaries and calls a halt, whenever necessary. As I didn't have that, I was able to stay childishly naive that much longer - so I did what I liked, because there was nobody stopping me, even when I got it wrong.
Oscar Hammerstein was a surrogate father during all those many days, and weeks and months when I didn't see my own father.
There was years when my father didn't even make a hundred grand - or barely made a hundred grand - and sure, we had a maid, but she only came twice a week. What do you think happened the other five days? You think those dishes washed themselves? You think those clothes got themselves in the hamper?
My father was a dreamer - my hero. He was a smart, tough guy from Poland, a cutter of lady's handbags, an old socialist-unionist who always considered himself a failure. His big line was: 'Don't end up like me.'
Seeing my father's handwriting puts me in contact with the man he was at each stage of his life.
My parents led this double life. They were in the underground movement to bring down the Nazis. My father was hanged for being a traitor.
I have never been a Conservative, or at least not since being a young teenager. My father voted Conservative, and even his doing that was a hangover from the '50s and '60s, which may have been an influence on me.
My father had a varied ear, from Hank Williams to Ravel.
The effect hip-hop had on me was enormous. I was exposed to it by happenstance. My father worked at a radio station in New York called WKTU Disco 92. It was the first radio station in New York City to play disco in the late '70s.
It was a fairly happy childhood. My father was working away, and my mum brought up five kids all on her own.
