My grandmother, who was simultaneously a woman of manners and verve, fended off marriage proposals until she was 30 because she was having too much fun to settle down.
It wasn't that there weren't menfolk in my grandmother's stories. There were lots of them but they died young or were drifters and dreamers who disappeared or turned to drink or succumbed to melancholia or slow mortal diseases. The women, on the other hand, lived a long time and were full of spit and vinegar until the end.
My grandmother has a great aesthetic sense. Unfortunately I didn't inherit it.
My grandmother - my mother's mother - was a German Jewish refugee, an only child who came here from Berlin in 1936 at the age of 17.
I used to have a lovely wallet with lots of different compartments where I kept photographs of my grandmother, grandfather and friends. It was stolen one night when I was out in Edinburgh, and I never got it back.
I'd love to own a bakery at some point. My grandmother could help me run it - she is an amazing baker! I'd also love to do a cookbook.
I credit my grandmother for teaching me to love and respect food. She taught me how to waste nothing, to make sure I used every bit of the chicken and boil the bones till no flavor could be extracted from them.
My grandmother was an actress too. In the thirties and forties she was under contract with Universal Studios. Crazy credits, lots of them. My dad was also under contract with Universal Studios. And my first film was shot on the same stage they both worked on at Universal.
Everyone in my family has been in music - my cousins, my grandmother, my grandfather - so it's quite a big family tree.
My grandmother taught me how to read, very early, but she taught me to read just the way she taught herself how to read - she read words rather than syllables. And as a result of that, when I entered school, it took me a long time to learn how to write.
In terms of people that I know, my grandmother and my mother are huge influences on my writing life because they are both massively supportive and always have been of my career.
How are we supposed to get old? What am I supposed to do? Am I supposed to get old? My kids tell me, 'We want you to look like a grandmother.' I agree with them. I want to look like a grandmother.
My grandmother is British. She was in the Women's Auxiliary Air Force during World War II. That's where she met my grandfather, who was sailing for the British Royal Navy. She was a war bride.
Food has always been in my life. Being born in Ethiopia, where there was a lack of food, and then really cooking with my grandmother Helga in Sweden. And my grandmother Helga was a cook's cook.
I've always written. There's a journal which I kept from about 9 years old. The man who gave it to me lived across the street from the store and kept it when my grandmother's papers were destroyed. I'd written some essays. I loved poetry, still do. But I really, really loved it then.
My grandmother has strongly influenced my approach to beauty. She has always cared for her skin by cleansing and washing her face with warm water in the morning. At all times, she has lipstick on and her face is immaculately powdered - she follows the same routine to this day and looks great at 94.
My father is 100% Japanese and came to the United States when he was only 18 years old. My grandmother still resides in Japan, which has allowed me to travel to the roots of my ancestors with my father.
As a child, I went to peace and ERA marches on the back of my mom and grandmother. Through them I learned that I wanted to find a way to make the world a more kind, compassionate place.
My grandmother, she's been the positive portion of my life the entire time. She raised us Baptist, and when I got old enough to say I didn't want to go to church, she didn't force me. She was cool.
If a tie is like kissing your sister, losing is like kissing you grandmother with her teeth out.
Those market researchers... are playing games with you and me and with this entire country. Their so-called samples of opinion are no more accurate or reliable than my grandmother's big toe was when it came to predicting the weather.
I have had to empty two family homes during the last few years - first, the house that had been my grandmother's since 1923, and then my own country home, which we had lived in for over twenty years.
I used to watch my grandmother make fancy, Julia Child-style beef bourguignon. And growing up in New York City, I was exposed to many cultures. I experimented with Puerto Rican and Jamaican food.
I wrote my first play as extra credit for my fourth grade English class. 'Can Helen Stop Smoking' was a satire on the ill effects of cigarette smoking. My friend Vicki Haugabrook played as Helen and I directed the show. At the time, my brother Vince was leading the campaign to get our grandmother to quit.
I think that anyone who denies their heritage doesn't deserve their destiny. My grandmother was a maid. She put nine children - eight of them - through college; I did not finish college.
I own a shameless number of ethnic necklaces acquired at local markets in developing countries or inherited from my grandmother. These have seen me through meetings in Davos and visits to refugee camps.
Landmines distinguish themselves because once they have been sown, once the soldier walks away from the weapon, the landmine cannot tell the difference between a soldier or a civilian - a woman, a child, a grandmother going out to collect firewood to make the family meal.
Becoming a grandmother has felt like being a mother.
The thing that always attracted me to New York was the sense of being in a place where a lot of people had a lot of stories not unlike mine. Everybody comes from somewhere else. Everyone's got a Polish grandmother, some kind of metamorphosis in their family circumstances. That's a very big thing - the experience of not living where you started.
I was my parent's first child, Joanna Catherine Going, named for my great-great grandmother Catherine, and my father's maternal aunt Johanna Burke, and bearing the initials of my father's father, John Christopher, who passed away just months before I was born.
Basically, I grew up watching Carter girls on stage, watching my grandmother, my mom and my aunts perform. They used to say, 'Okay, Carter girls, you're on!'
I grew up at my grandmother's house, and she had a beautiful garden. I used to hate mowing the lawn and weeding, which is what you do when you're a kid. I loathe gardening, but I love gardens, and I have two beautiful gardens.
It follows that if you are not a mother you are not a grandmother. Your life has become unpunctuated, whereas the lives of other women around you have these distinct phases.
One of the reasons I love the law is because I was raised in family - my grandfather was a lawyer, but more importantly, my grandmother was his secretary. And she taught me that lawyers were some of the most civil, most courteous - and in those days, most courtly - people that she knew.
My grandmother was a chef, and she taught me to cook. One day I want a restaurant, a small Italian grill. That's my aspiration.
I come from Texas, and my grandmother and mother were born in Arkansas.