I want any excuse to come home. My dad is not a spring chicken any more. If anyone says, 'Go buy a postage stamp in London,' I'll go and do it.
We all have experiences in our lives that change us, and we all learn from people, like my dad, but at the end of the day, it's only us. And we're only responsible to make ourselves happy.
I was born in 1968, just eighteen months after my sister Chrisse and just one year after Dad passed the bar exam.
Baseball is the president tossing out the first ball of the season. And a scrubby schoolboy playing catch with his dad on a Mississippi farm.
I have great faith that Heaven's there and I'll see my brothers and my mom and dad when I get there.
When I was 7, my dad asked his friend to teach me. I played my first tournament competition when I was 8. I remember I shot around 125.
If a dad does his job, we don't need prisons, we don't need jails. That's what I saw growing up.
I've become a less brave traveller since I became a dad, but in the past I was more foolhardy than brave.
My dad was working abroad, in Iraq, and he was a doctor. We used to go and visit him, in Baghdad, off and on. For the first ten years of my life, we used to go backwards and forwards to Baghdad, so that was quite amazing. I spent a lot of time traveling around the Middle East.
I stayed in Baghdad every summer until I was 14. My dad's sister is still there, but many of my relatives have managed to get out. People forget that there are still people there who are not radicalized in any particular direction, trying to live normal lives in a very difficult situation.
My mom and dad got divorced when I was very young, and growing up in a family where the head of the household wasn't a man made a big difference.
I was always the new kid in school, I'm the kid from a broken family, I'm the kid who had no dad showing up at the father-son stuff, I'm the kid that was using food stamps at the grocery store.
My dad had a personal style which was very attractive. It was quite reserved and quite elegant, and it was infectious.
In my case, I was born to parents who were very young, and I don't think they were entirely ready to have a child. My dad was going to college and working two or three jobs at the same time, and my mum was working and going to school.
My dad was an absentee dad, so it was always important to me that I was part of my daughter's life, and she deserved two parents, which is part of the rationale behind us staying married for 30 years.
My senior year of high school, when I was getting recruited for college, my dad goes to me, 'You can become an Olympic champion.' And that's the first time that I'd heard someone else say that to me. I was like, 'Uh, are you talking to me?'
The only time I think about life beyond F1 is when I contemplate becoming a dad. But there's no way that's going to happen while I'm still racing. To be successful in F1 you need to be very selfish in lots of ways and you're away from home for long periods. That's not the kind of father I want to be.
But you know, my dad called me the laziest white kid he ever met. When I screamed back at him that he was putting down a race of people to call me lazy, his answer was that's not what he was doing, and that I was also the dumbest white kid he ever met.
My dad said: 'It looks like you'll be world No.1 in a few hours and I wanted to be the first to say congratulations.'
My dad dragged me to a Bruce Springsteen concert as a kid. It was my first concert, but I fell asleep in the middle. My second concert was Weezer on the 'Pinkerton' tour, and 'Pinkerton' is the reason why I'm doing this.
I came from somewhat of a musical family. I had an uncle on Broadway. My dad kind of knows how to play instruments. Although, I always find it annoying when he does play an instrument.
I grew up in a predominantly Caucasian neighborhood, but my mom is Filipino-Spanish and my dad is Irish.
The moment my doctor told me, I went silent. My mum and dad were with me, then we all went to pieces. I was saying, No, I've got my flight to Sydney in two hours. I'm getting on a plane.
I grew up in Texas, and people love their American-made muscle cars there. I grew up around people who loved cars and took care of cars and my dad's a big car nut, so I learned a little bit about cars - how to love them, most importantly. I think that from the time I could remember, I've always envisioned myself in a vintage muscle car.
When I used to do musical theatre, my dad refused to come backstage. He never wanted to see the props up close or the sets up close. He didn't want to see the magic.
My mother's a psychologist, my stepfather's a psychologist, my stepmother is a therapist and my dad's a lawyer. So it was all prominent in my life. I don't know anyone who doesn't know someone on some form of prescription medicine.
As a kid who wasn't into sports, at school I felt almost alienated at times, whereas in the theatre community there was this amazing sense of camaraderie. Early on, we would go to rehearsals with my dad and I was like the mascot for the backstage crew. That was a big part of my childhood, so I dreamed of one day doing a play in London.
It was tough at the time but when I was younger, my Dad. I would say my Dad, because without him I wouldn't have been here. I mean it was tough for me because he was really demanding. With him, it was never enough, you know, anything I did was never enough.
My dad said, 'The thing that I was told that was really helpful was that I mustn't be afraid of the things I was afraid of when I was five years old'. The shock of his childhood had put him in this defensive crouch against the world, and he needed to know that he had a nice wife and kids and it wasn't the same any more.
When I was growing up my mother would say, 'Your dad may have to learn about being a father because he lost his own and that would have affected him'.
I feel connected to the Second World War because my father lost his father in that war. So, through my dad and the effect it had on him of losing his father young, I always felt connected to the war. It goes back years, but it still feels to me as if we're completely living in it.
I'm a military kid, both parents in the military - Mom did 12 years, Dad did 21, served in two wars. So discipline is something that was huge.
One thing my dad always told me, was he would make sure I always had what he didn't have. He couldn't play basketball because he didn't have tennis shoes - so I had five pairs of tennis shoes.
You always give credit where credit is due - to high school coaches, college coaches - but my dad, the foundation that he built with me, is where all of this came from. The speed, the determination, the mindset, just the natural belief that you can do anything you put your mind to, it all comes from my dad.
I don't know much about only children. I was the middle one of three, and if ever I was alone with mum and dad, it was a rare moment.
I think in my case, I had no choice but to have a good sense of humor. I grew up with my dad, Danny Thomas, and George Burns and Bob Hope and Milton Berle and Sid Caesar and all those guys were at our house all the time and telling jokes and making each other laugh.
Dad taught us about morals, values and goals. Having a tight-knit family was important to him.
I wanted to perform well for my mom and dad, because in high school, I didn't have a job. My brothers, they worked at Pizza Hut or places like that, but sports, that was my way of giving back.
My dad said if you become a tennis professional just make sure you get into the top hundred, because you have to make a little bit of money. You make a living so you can pay your coaching and, you know, your travels.
My dad was the manager at the 45,000-acre ranch, but he owned his own 1,200-acre ranch, and I owned four cattle that he gave to me when I graduated from grammar school, from the eighth grade. And those cows multiplied, and he kept track of them for years for me. And that was my herd.
My dad was a diplomat and after living in America, where I was born, he was posted to Cairo.
My dad was depressed a lot of the time, and there were a lot of things in his life that he never resolved.