My father really was not the dominant person who raised the family, it was my mother who raised the family.
I hope we can see African American characters as the diva, as the villain, and also as the praying mother. We are all of those things. We tended to only be the best friend or the neighbor in everybody's sitcom.
It was probably my parents who inspired me most. My father was a scientist and answered my scientific questions, while my mother took me on walks and showed me birds and plants. She also took me out at night and showed me the constellations and the aurora.
My mother was physically and emotionally abusive. My father was an extremely cold man.
My mother tongue, Mende, is very expressive, very figurative, and when I write, I always struggle to find the English equivalent of things that I really want to say in Mende. For example, in Mende, you wouldn't say 'night came suddenly'; you would say 'the sky rolled over and changed its sides.'
Dortmund is a fantastic club, critical for my career. But my Spanish grandfather on my mother's side always wished that I play in Spain. And if, then at Real Madrid.
I felt unhappy and trapped. If I left baseball, where could I go, what could I do to earn enough money to help my mother and to marry Rachel? The solution to my problem was only days away in the hands of a tough, shrewd, courageous man called Branch Rickey, the president of the Brooklyn Dodgers.
When my mother was raising me, she moved us upstate to the Woodstock area. Our closest neighbor was a mile away. She planted all her own vegetables.
My mother loaned me $1000. The first issue came out at the end of 1953. I knew I needed something original. I had a photographer shoot a 3D feature for the first issue and learned it would cost too much money. When the 3D thing turned out to be too expensive, at that same moment I came across the photos of Marilyn Monroe.
No matter what, your parents are going to worry about you. I had a tour bus, and my mother still thought I was broke. Remember: It's your life, not theirs. Just because your parents sent you to college doesn't mean they bought the rest of your life.
My mother's brother became the undersecretary of the interior for Nixon, which did cause a little drama in my family because I was going to riots and everything, but he turned out great and gave us a nice cheque for an AIDS benefit we had for the 'Serial Mom' premiere.
My father was a restaurant man, laundry man in his lifetime. And I've often wondered how and why did I become an actor? Where did I get the so-called talent to express myself? And I look back, and I see that my mother was very animated. I can remember that she used to, what she called 'bei zhu.'
For example, when my mother died, the people who showed up just to put an apron on to cook, people who really do the right thing, so to speak, as my momma would always say to show that they care, a sense of community that we've lost so much in our country.
I have always been very good at being able to structure my time. My mother had a huge influence on me. My dad was my coach. He was a hugely influential figure.
My mother had an incredibly strong accent - although I couldn't hear it - and she was the main person there, so I'll have learnt to speak English from her.
You know, I used to warm the thermometer on the light bulb... I was really good at being sick. I could forge my mother's signature on a sick note so well I was hardly ever at school.
My mom wasn't so much such a great cook. But I don't know, I think I have a very strong mother, and it's funny, because both of my sisters - I have two sisters, and I'm the baby, but they all work hard. I'm not sure where I get it from, and I'm not sure where they get it from, but they must get it from somewhere... I like to work.
Cucumber reminds me of my mother making me eat sprouts.
I could not tell you the date of my mother's death. I could not tell you the date of my dad's death. These are not dates that I find significant.
I was born Pauline Matthews and grew up in Bradford as one of three children - I had an older brother, David, and an older sister, Betty. My father Fred worked in the mills as a textile weaving supervisor, and my mother, Mary, was a housewife.
My mother was a first-grade teacher, so I credit her with this lifelong intellectual curiosity I have, and love of reading and learning.
I knew that there was a great deal of depth and life that was sitting just beyond my mother's gaze.
My sisters used to learn dance, and I used to stand behind them and dance. So my guruji suggested that I also learn, as I seemed interested. I started learning at the age of three and was always on stage for something or the other. My mother is proud of me, and clearly my artistic bent comes from her.
I've been extremely lucky in that I've been a very successful model for a long time. So now I'm an actress and a mother. I'm a theatre rat, which I always wanted to be - I've wanted to act since I was 14 - and I never get bored, ever, and I have four beautiful children. I am, in fact, so darn lucky.
My mother was an actress and a director, as well. And my father was a playwright and poet.
My mother was a dominant force in our family. And I always saw her as the leader. And that was great for me as a young woman, because I never saw that women had to be dominated by men.
Trump has never sacrificed anything for this country, and in fact, he has attacked people who have. It just makes me sick to my stomach when I see him attacking the mother of a fallen hero or John McCain. It just makes me sick to my stomach that this guy thinks he's prepared to be commander-in-chief.
My mother couldn't take having three boys. She was extremely jumpy, to say the least. Any noise startled her. The sound of a pot dropping on the ground could make her hit the ceiling.
I am the ultimate Jewish mother.
My mother was a Book of the Month Club devotee. I remember she always looked forward to Pearl Buck's books.
In between films I like to travel and hope to visit every continent before I become a mother.
My mother and father instilled in me a sense of purpose not defined by today's street obsession with bling, cars or cribs.
I am who I am today because of my mother.
When I was 11 or 12, I was really bored with everything on my summer reading list. It was all happy, middle-grade kinds of books. I was getting frustrated, because I liked to read. My mother went to the library and got me a copy of 'The Other Side of Midnight' by Sidney Sheldon. It was my first adult book.
I am the woman I grew to be partly in spite of my mother, and partly because of the extraordinary love of her best friends, and my own best friends' mothers, and from surrogates, many of whom were not women at all but gay men. I have loved them my entire life, even after their passing.
I was an only child and I had a mother and father who were just - there wasn't a straight man in the house, and I mean that in a very nice way. They were fun, and we would laugh a lot.
