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I never liked my father. He really was a dullard and misanthrope. My mother and he were married for 22, years and it was an ill match. She encouraged me to be a writer. She opened her home to black friends, and this was the 1950s. She didn't care later when I write about her.

I never kissed my father until he was on his death bed.

Things with my dad were pretty good until I won an Academy Award. He was really loving to me until I got more attention than he did. Then he hated me.

I grew up not liking my father very much. I never saw him cry. But he must have. Everybody cries.

My father never put me on his lap and said he loved me.

There was a great strain in our family because my father didn't want anything to do with me. He was happy to see my brother and sister, but not me. I don't know why. Maybe it was shame. I don't know. But he never wanted anything to do with me. That rejection was terribly hurtful and it went on for years.

I didn't know my father very well; I only met him a few times.

My father was always telling himself no one was perfect, not even my mother.

When my mother and father fell in love, my mother's family would never accept it.

For 20 years, my mother, my sister and I had seldom spoken of my father. If he happened to come up in conversation, pain and embarrassment entered the room and stayed until he disappeared back into the silence with which we all felt more at ease.