With red clay between my toes, and the sun setting over my head, the ghost of my mother blows in, riding on a honeysuckle breeze, oh lord, riding on a honeysuckle breeze.
But I was very, very unhappy because my mother was very charming and generous, but to me, very dominating.
Yes, my mother was a singer, and my father played piano and keyboards. They were in a band together, though they also had regular jobs because they had kids and stuff like that.
My children are now all grown. Some are in their 60s. But when they call and I answer the phone, they say, 'How are you?' And before I can answer, they ask, 'Is Mother there?'
I didn't even realize this at first, but there's almost no central character in any of my 24 books who doesn't have a dead mother or a lost parent.
A lazy man works twice as hard. My mother told that to me, and now I say it to my kids. If you're writing an essay, keep it in the lines and in the margins so you don't have to do it over.
As for the American child's classic problem - too much mother, too little father - that would be cured by an equalization of parental responsibility.
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.
For me, the summer will be pure gray - mother-of-pearl gray, very pale gray. To me, this is the big statement for summer. Then we have light blue, light turquoise, lots of pink.
Children who open their lunchboxes and find mothers' handwritten notes telling them how amazingly bright they are tend to falter when they encounter academic difficulties.
I think that people assumed I was white because of my last name. My father is Caucasian, my mother is Hispanic. But English was my second language, believe it or not.
Education commences at the mother's knee, and every word spoken within the hearing of children tends toward the formation of character.
I was raised in Brooklyn and in Baltimore. My father was a bookkeeper. When I was 36 years old, my mother told me I was adopted.
I know we will look back on this and think how odd it was we were championing the rights of lone mothers to bring up their children on benefit.
I remember all too well the premiere of Ecstasy when I watched my bare bottom bounce across the screen and my mother and father sat there in shock.
The thing about having a very young mother who had you at 20 is that you expect that you're going to be old ladies together.
My mother brought us to the library every week, and I read a lot. That's what kept me company. I went from school to school, but there was always reading.
I can cook; but not well. I figure I have six years until my children discover what their friends' mothers make for dinner.
You know, that was what we missed most. Not our beds, not our homes, not even our mothers. We would talk about food.
A mother does not become pregnant in order to provide employment to medical people. Giving birth is an ecstatic jubilant adventure not available to males. It is a woman's crowning creative experience of a lifetime.
In an angry fit, my mother had called him an airhead, who couldn't find his brain even if it came knocking on his door.
