“I had an idyllic childhood and when my parents bought me a Punch and Judy Show and a ventriloquist's dummy, I'd perform anywhere, anytime. My parents were wonderful when I told them I wanted to be an entertainer.”

“I like my name. My parents were in the Uffizi Gallery looking at a Leonardo Da Vinci when my mom felt me kick. That's how I got my name. My parents were real hippies.”

“When I was a kid I got no respect. When my parents got divorced there was a custody fight over me… and no one showed up.”

“But it was my parents I longed for mostly. I wanted to be a little girl again and cuddle into them, wriggling in between them like I'd done in their bed when I was three or four, snug and warm in the safest place in the world.

Instead I had Hell.”

“That night my parents told me what my cousin had suggested. I said no, absolutely not! I turned and walked away as fast as I could. My parents really had no idea how much it had hurt me all these years to go to school. I was done with all book learning.”

“When I was a kid my parents moved a lot, but I always found them.”

“No kid really wants a cool parent. "Cool" parents, when I was a kid, meant parents who let you smoke weed in the house – or allowed boyfriends to sleep over with their daughters. That would make Sarah Palin “cool.” But, as I remember, we thought those parents were kind of creepy. They were useful, sure, but what was wrong with them that they found us so entertaining? Didn’t they have their own friends?”

“My parents took my ambitions seriously. They took an hour each way to training. They were waiting for me, and when I wanted to go home alone, I took the bus from Warsaw to Leszno for two hours. When I was late, I had to seize an opportunity, sometimes someone took pity and took me away.”

“When I painted Christ's parents I was thinking of my own parents. The bearded man is the Child's father. He is my father.”

“I started lessons when I was three and a half. In the beginning I just played a little but, when I was five, I played my first recital, and from that point my parents had high hopes for me; especially my father.”