Am I feminist? I don't know. I'm not really sure what that is. I am all up for equality to a certain extent, although in the home, I do feel this is where the mother excels and the man needs to step back a bit. My family is from Nigeria, and this is our culture.
My mother wanted a conservative, secure life, and she has been married to my father since she was 18... A lot of hard work went into that marriage and a lot of not getting what you want.
We were so poor that my mother would often leave me in a foster home until she could raise enough money to rent rooms for us.
I grew up in Northern California, so the hippies were still around. My father and mother were very Republican, very strait-laced and very uptight, but my uncles were hippies.
I reached a time in college when I didn't know what I wanted to do. At that time, women's careers were essentially nursing, secretarial and teaching. My mother advised me to get my teacher's certificate.
No one calls me Belcalis except for my family, my mother, and my daddy.
I consider a good dinner party at our house to be where people drink and eat more than they're meant to. My husband is a really fantastic cook. His mother is Italian and if you walk into our house, we assume you're starving.
I can assure you I have never made decisions on my mother's behalf on her foundation's board.
Some libertarians say, 'Well, if people work harder, they can make more money.' But, you know, my mother is a nurse and I am a venture capitalist. I think no matter how great a nurse she is, she wouldn't earn a one-thousandth of what I can make, if that.
If I tried to shout over my older brother, my mother told me keep quiet. If I tried to shout over my little sister, my father told me to shut up. I found the best way to be heard was to lower my voice and actually speak when I had something to say.
When it came to using elements of your personal life in your work, my mother was the master, or the mistress. There were three or four songs she wrote about my father - songs about failed love.
My mother kept the house clean and we ate good. I didn't know we were poor until I started giving interviews.
My mother tried her best to give us a sense of self-esteem.
When I was a kid, my daily routine was playing make-believe, and I kind of created these stories throughout the day. And when it came time to go to preschool, my English wasn't really so great because my mother wanted me to learn Ukrainian, so she signed me up for these children's theater groups.
My dad worked on ambulances for a while; my mother had a lot of different jobs with the city.
Looking feminine is important to me. My personal style is fairly traditional. I was definitely influenced by my mother, who always looks elegant, and by Estee's classic style; she was always in Givenchy or Ungaro.
When my father left us, my mother went back to school immediately. She went to school in the day while we were at school, and she worked at night. She worked very hard to never let someone define her as a victim or a failure.
My father is a taxi driver, and my mother ran a small business. I hadn't even met a barrister before I got my first shot at the legal profession. But back then, I was lucky enough to be given a break - I can't help but wonder if I would be so lucky today.
I never modeled myself after anyone. The person who had most influence on me was my mother, but it was really for her strength and courage more than her style, even though she had a lot of style. In a weird way, looking at pictures of me when I was 17 or 18, I was dressing the same way. I haven't changed very much.
My father passed away when I was very young, so I was head of household for a very long time. Whether it came to cooking food or having to braid hair to get kids out of the door for school, I've been one that has - with the help of my mother - has been a father figure for a lot of young ladies.
I find that in this day and generation, the meanest men have the lowest estimate of woman; that the greater the man is, the grander he is, the more he thinks of mother, wife and daughter.
Becoming a grandmother has felt like being a mother.
My wife is the most wonderful woman in the world, and my parents are the most extraordinary father and mother.
My mother - who's from Iowa - owns and runs her own day-care centre, while my father's a developer. And my musical influences, I think, came from my father's side of the family.
My mother gets told, 'Oh, you're so lucky that your daughters are doing so well.' She never corrects anybody when they assume Helen is her daughter.
My mother was a stay-at-home mom until I was about 11, when she got a job - and it was like a light came on inside her. It's not wrong to be passionate about your career. When you love what you do, you bring that stimulation back to your family.
All human beings are inherently good, so when someone goes off the rails, there must be some mitigating factor - he was bullied, was a loner, had an abusive father, or a domineering mother, etc.
We all go back to our roots. My father went to the central west, went to Ilfracombe in 1919. He was the manager of the wool scour there. And, Ilfracombe was right at the heart of Australia's great wool industry, and my mother was a teacher at Winton.
I didn't start grieving for my mother properly until I was maybe 16.
I would ask my mother to show me how to walk - and she did show me. That's why I think it's funny when people say, 'Did so-and-so teach you how to walk?' And I always say, 'You must be talking about my mother, because it was my mother who taught me how to walk.'
My mother told me you marry whoever you want to, as long as you are happy. My parents are very accommodating, and I know they will always support me.
I have good genes. My father is Danish and my mother is Irish and Native American. They both have good skin.
There is a societal cost of increased pollution, and that's what I'm passionate about as a mother.
I wanted to write something in a voice that was unique to who I was. And I wanted something that was accessible to the person who works at Dunkin Donuts or who drives a bus, someone who comes home with their feet hurting like my father, someone who's busy and has too many children, like my mother.
I don't know any woman who has a simple relationship with their mother or with their daughter.
The people who raised me musically are my mother, who is a classically trained pianist, and my stepfather.
