We ought to be beating our chests every day. We ought to look in the mirror, stick out our chests, suck in our bellies, and say, 'Damn, we're Americans,' and smile.
Nobody needs a smile so much as the one who has none to give. So get used to smiling heart-warming smiles, and you will spread sunshine in a sometimes dreary world.
Breathing in, I am aware of my heart. Breathing out, I smile to my heart and know that my heart still functions normally. I feel grateful for my heart.
We smile at the ignorance of the savage who cuts down the tree in order to reach its fruit; but the same blunder is made by every person who is over eager and impatient in the pursuit of pleasure.
My mother-in-law speaks not a word of English. I speak not a word of Tajiki. So I smile at her ingratiatingly and she fixes me with a beady eye.
People often think that people like me don't have ordinary lives. I have the greatest pleasure, and in fact, the greatest success in my career is having been a mother.
I'm 23 years old. I might just be my mother's child, but in all reality, I'm everybody's child. Nobody raised me; I was raised in this society.
I must have got my detailed, obsessive streak from my father, who was an English teacher, because my mother wasn't like me at all.
My joke is that my father was a minister and my mother was an English teacher, so I'm trained to see the world in terms of symbols, which is hard when you just want to make toast.
My mother was an elementary school teacher for 35 years and taught at the Nixon School in New Jersey. I was raised as a very liberal Democrat, and she was protesting Nixon when he was in office.
My grandfather on my mother's side was a professor of mechanical engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; my other grandfather was a lawyer, and one time Speaker of the Tennessee House of Representatives.
That always seemed to be the most critical test that a child was confronted with - loss of parents, loss of direction, loss of love. Can you live without a mother and a father?
I want people to remember that Pakistan is my country. It is like my mother, and I love it dearly. Even if its people hate me, I will still love it.
My father, my mother, and then my father was always on top of me - 'Keep your nose clean. Do you love what you're doing?' 'Yes.' 'Then be aware, or you're going to lose it.'
Even though I love my mother, I didn't want to make an idealized portrait of her. I'm fascinated more by her defects - they are funnier than her other qualities.
My mother got me into music when I was a little kid. She used to play music, blast it, when she was cleaning the house, while I was crawling around. I just love loud music.
Within 18 months of my parents' marriage in 1900, my mother fell in love with an Englishman who would have described himself as a gentleman but who was, in fact, nothing more than a devious adventurer.
Well, I was very lucky. I was brought up west southwest coast of Scotland and my mother and father had a music shop, and so I was surrounded by pianos and drums and guitars, and music, of course.
I think I definitely learned how to structure songs, just from listening to a lot of 1960s, 1970s pop music, although I'm sure my mother's watchful eye had a lot to do with it.
When I was very little my mother would read to me in bed. She gave me a fascination for stories, and for the music in words.
People in England were coming up to me, saying, My mother and father turned me on to your music. This happened to me 20 years ago. When I was 40 they were saying that.
