When my dad toured in '91 I think my first gig properly was the Tokyo Dome 50 000 people indoors. That was pretty scary. I was 12 or 13.

You can' t help being a musician because you've grown up with music yet being one means being compared to your dad and being slated for it. But I really don't have the ambitions of most people going into the industry.

People say I'm not good at writing about men. My dad left when I was 16. Give me a break. I'm doing the best I can.

My parents are very hard working people who did everything they could for their children. I have two brothers and they worked dog hard to give us an education and provide us with the most comfortable life possible. My dad provided for his family daily. So yes that is definitely in my DNA.

I remember once we got an interview and he said 'Dad these people are writing about me like I'm an adult. Don't they know I'm a kid?' I have never tried to encourage him to get a music image like other musicians have.

I'm trying to have my own thing and I don't know if it's even possible. I didn't realize so many people actually think I'm trying to be like my dad. I read comments like 'She's no Elvis.' I'm not trying to be. I never set out to be.

My dad doesn't get any of my jokes. He laughs at them but he doesn't understand them. He's just laughing because people around him are laughing.

Like my dad I have a Christmas party most years. I like to celebrate and see as many people as possible.

My dad came out of the Roosevelt era and the Depression. One person and one party made a difference in his life. That's what everybody forgot when they called my father and other people political bosses.

My parents were involved in everything I did. They were showbiz people themselves. My dad was an actor. They were parents they did what parents are supposed to do.

In the 'Garnethill' trilogy people always forget that Maureen O'Donnell's dad was a journalist and she did art history at uni and her brother did law but no-one ever thinks they're middle-class - they're just working class because they speak with accents.

People who have not done their research on me do not know that I am European born in Copenhagen Denmark to an Italian father from Napoli and a mother from Alabama who was singing opera and went to Europe met my dad fell in love and then moved back to Rome where I was raised between Rome and Hamburg.

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.

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.

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.

Within our culture every school has a swimming pool. We lived on the coast. People swam in the surf. It's a very sporty nation and at that particular time anyone who had an artistic bent was very much an outsider. So if you liked reading or ideas or playing the piano then your dad viewed you as a sissy basically.

My mother always taught me even my dad just never let other people's opinions of you shape your opinion of yourself. And I never have and I never will.

It's a complex relationship when your dad happened to be president and you are president and then you have all the amateur psychology that goes on when people try to speculate about motivations.

I am lucky to have had an attentive curious and loving dad and heart-smart down-to-earth gifted mother. They changed the outlooks of their own lives and have never forgotten the people and organizations that helped them dream bigger than their circumstances should have allowed.

My mom grew up in poverty in Oklahoma - like Dust Bowl nine people in one room kind of place - and the way she got out of poverty was through education. My dad grew up without a dad with very little and he also made his way out through education.

My parents were kind of over protective people. Me and my sister had to play in the backyard all the time. They bought us bikes for Christmas but wouldn't let us ride in the street we had to ride in the backyard. Another Christmas my dad got me a basketball hoop and put it in the middle of the lawn! You can't dribble on grass.

People who build family businesses are not classically trained. They have to deal with an enormous amount of politics. You think corporate politics are tough? Go work for your dad or your mom.

My dad is like a cactus - introverted and tough. I'm a people person like my mom but I got my competitiveness from my dad. He came to this country from Belarus with nothing and built a real business. He's my hero for giving me that need to run a business and for having enormous confidence in me.

My dad was a homicide cop in the gay neighborhood in the city when gay neighborhoods were desperate depressing sad places run by the mob. The only gay people he'd met when I came out to him were corpses.