I can't stand quitters. My mother is a very strong, determined woman. I was peeling onions when I was seven, but I walked off when my eyes began to sting. She said to me, 'You start something and you finish it', and that stuck with me. I'm persistent...
In my day, when you called on a girl, her mother was always hollering down to see if she was still unraped, the maid would look in, her father would shuffle his feet in another room. Today the boy calls up, says, 'Meet you at the back door of Stern's...
When I first found out that Superman wasn't real, I was about maybe eight. And I was talking to my mother about it. And she was like, 'No, no, no. There's no Superman.' And I started crying. I really thought he was coming to rescue us. The chaos, the...
When I was really small, my mother had difficulty keeping me dressed, as I liked to be naked! I definitely had very strong ideas on what I wanted to wear. My favourite look was always Action Man and Spiderman. Now though, I really like beautiful clot...
Monica Besra, a Bengali woman from a remote Indian village, was reportedly suffering from a malignant ovarian tumor when she went, in 1998, to a hospice founded by Mother Teresa's Missionaries of Charity. Nuns at the mission reportedly placed a medal...
I have a horror of boring someone or, worse still, of someone boring me. I said to my mother when I was seven, 'But, Mums, if it was only my husband and me in the house together, what would we talk about?' I've never wanted to answer my own question,...
John and I were lucky because our mother was a strong woman with high expectations and a strong sense of values. She encouraged us to pursue things we were interested in and not think about what other people wanted us to do.
I grew up in New York City, and both my parents worked. On weekends, we'd go out to the country, and on Sunday nights we'd come back. Sometimes we were a little cranky - it was a long drive. But we could always look forward to one thing: my mother's ...
I met the guys through a friend of a friend, and their former drummer had quit. I wasn't too familiar with the Chili Peppers before that, so I joined at the end of 88' and we finished recording Mother's Milk at the end of 89', next thing I know I'm i...
My mother would never let me in the kitchen. I always wanted to cook, but I was never allowed to. Her view of the world was, 'Cooking is my job, and studying is your job.' I think, in retrospect, she didn't like the chaos. She was very orderly. It ha...
We all come from somewhere. Born, aborted, extradited, fugitive or even enslaved. But much of what we are, belongs to Mother Africa. We need to respect and have esteem, knowledge and curiosity. Then, open your eyes to understand a little more. Do not...
My first job now is as a mother, everything else is secondary. My kids understand that I am an actress, and they are always so surprised to hear my voice on a cartoon character, or see my face on a video box. If it ever gets to be too much though, th...
I grew up in Houston, and I remember we had separate drinking fountains, and black people sat in the balcony of the theater... We had an African-American housekeeper growing up who was really like my second mother. I thought it was silly - hatred jus...
You must be ready to give up everything, not only material attachments but also human attachments - father, mother, wife, children - everything that you have. But the one thing which you have to abandon unconditionally is your self.
My mother and father were fantastic, very active. I find it difficult to say this, but I'm quite a loving person and I've always been loving to my friends. In the long run, that pays off. I'm very interested in other people, and if you are, they're i...
I still have my bad days when I think I'm not getting everything I deserve. But those pass quickly once my Mother gets on the phone and says, 'listen, we used to eat rocks and walk 80 miles a day to school.
I'm no longer just a candidate. I'm the President. I know what it means to send young Americans into battle, for I have held in my arms the mothers and fathers of those who didn't return. I've shared the pain of families who've lost their homes, and ...
A lot of people think this is a goodie two-shoes talking. But we do have a tendency to complain rather than celebrating who we are. I learned at my mother's knee it's better to appreciate what's happening... I think we kind of talk ourselves into the...
my mother, poor fish, wanting to be happy, beaten two or three times a week, telling me to be happy: "Henry, smile! why don't you ever smile?" and then she would smile, to show me how, and it was the saddest smile I ever saw
My father was the orphaned son of immigrants to the United States from Ireland. My father never knew his parents. His mother died - we're not sure - either at or shortly after his birth, and he and all of his siblings were placed in orphanages in the...
If there's a problem, we at Wine Library never tell ourselves that once we handle this issue, we'll never have to deal with the person again. We talk to every single person as though we're going to wind up sitting next to that person at his or her mo...