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.
My mother was religious; she was knowledgeable about mythology and scriptures; she could tell the metaphysical nuances and make the story come to life with their deeper significance. The current generation is missing out on this.
I was trying to manage school and training for the Olympics and ended up not doing well at either. That was a big lesson in my life. My mother expected both.
My father is a chemist, my mother was a homemaker. My parents instilled in us the feeling that learning was the most exciting thing that could happen to you, and it never ends.
Since I'm a mother and a wife, I have to have passion or the frustration would win out. But I love managing people. The product is second to managing the people. And marketing to consumers is so challenging because it is evolving constantly.
I love my heritage! I have my mother, who is an Irish-Italian, and my father who is African, so I have the taste buds of an Italian and the spice of an African.
My favorite song as a boy was definitely 'Downtown' recorded by Petula Clark. I still love it! And the original cast recording of 'Gypsy'; I played my mother's cast recordings until there was no vinyl left.
I hated to read. My mother could not get me to read. I'm going through the same thing with my daughter now. I love to read now, but I don't remember reading.
Being a single mother was the right thing for me. But I have a tremendous amount of help from my friends. They're in love with my kids, and my kids are in love with them.
The relationship I have to my fatherland is like that of mothers with crippled children: they love them all the more, the more crippled they are. Germany is the background of all my plans, the return to Germany.
My mother asks when I will do some theatre, and there is something about getting your 15 minute call. That is what you become an actor for - performing in front of people and getting the love from the audience.
I've done stand-up since I was 18 years old, and I absolutely love it, but I used to go onstage, and the audience was my peers. Now I go onstage, and I could be their mother.
When I was very small, the electricity was turned off because we didn't pay the bill. I remember sitting by the oil lamp listening to my mother playing 'Careless Love' on the piano.
My love for artichokes comes from when I was very young. My mother and father would slice the hearts and fry them, and they would be crispy around the leaves and tender at the base.
It's interesting to me that I get cast as mothers and really maternal, sweet, nice people... Maybe I have a vulnerability or something; maybe that's what it is.
My mother's illness fitted into this protest against the treatment of the sick who could not pay, the inefficiency of commercialism, the waste, the extravagance, and the poverty.
I can't bear the thought of my mother having to push me around in a wheelchair. I'd rather die quickly.
While I'm generally silent on the affairs of my biological mother, her recent tirade has taken a gross turn.
No matter how old a mother is she watches her middle-aged children for signs of improvement.
Until 1943 I received no stipend. I was able to support myself as my mother was the daughter of a relatively wealthy cotton manufacturer.
My mother is French-Italian with a little Spanish blood in her. I've been raised, and she was, as far as I know, raised as a Christian.
