I was very, very little - it was the first time I ever cooked on my own, with my mother's supervision - and I made scrambled eggs. I felt so accomplished, like magic!
I was 16 when I got a scholarship to study classical composition at a conservatory. By that time I had already listened to Scottish folksong with my mother, sung in church choirs, and had sung solo with Benjamin Britten conducting.
My father worked, and my mother played bridge. Every time I went out of the house, I was chauffeur-driven with my nanny next to me to stop me being kidnapped.
The truth of the matter is, you lose a parent to murder when you're 10 years old, and in fact at the time of the murder you hate your lost parent, my mother in my case.
When I hear that a project takes place out of town, the material better be terrific, and it has to come at the right time. My kids are getting older, so it's getting easier, but being a mother - it's a difficult thing to juggle.
When I was young I was one of the second generation of black people in Holland. My father was the first. My mother was white, and living with a black man at that time and having a how-you-say half-caste boy is not easy.
Occasionally, I would focus on a particular school project and become obsessed with, what seemed to my mother, to be trivial details instead of apportioning the time I spent on school work in a more efficient way.
Being a mother is more exhausting than working, and sometimes I push myself too hard and burn myself out. I can appreciate how exhausting it must be for women who have to do everything themselves all the time.
I always told my mother I wanted a job where I could have a lot of fun and have a lot of time off. She asked me where I was going to find that, and I said, 'I don't know, but it's out there.'
There was no joke I could make that was too offensive. I can actually remember at least one time where my mother told me something that, I was like, 'whoa!'
They talked about me as if I were Mother Teresa, and that every time I get a paycheck I go and send it to poor people and that we spend every free moment helping out people less fortunate. That was an enormous exaggeration.
I was named Margaret Yvonne. 'Margaret' because my mother was very fond of one of the derivatives of the name. She was fascinated at the time by the movie star Baby Peggy, and I suppose she wanted a Baby Peggy of her own.
To all those mothers and fathers who are struggling with teen-agers, I say, just be patient: even though it looks like you can't do anything right for a number of years, parents become popular again when kids reach 20.
Arthur Hutchins: Night, Mommy. Christine Collins: [yelling] Stop calling me that! I'm not your mother! I want my son back! Damn you!
[overdressed for winter] Randy: I can't put my arms down! Mother: Well... put your arms down when you get to school.
Mother: This isn't one of those trees where all the needles falls off, is it? Tree Man: No, that's them balsams.
Papinou: Having a mistress is no excuse for leaving the mother of your children; the world has lost its values.
Big Johnson: [flying in the chopper to the roof] Just like fuckin' Saigon, hey, Slick? Little Johnson: [smiling] I was in junior high, dickhead.
Ellerby: Go fuck yourself. Dignam: I'm tired from fucking your wife. Ellerby: How is your mother? Dignam: Good, she's tired from fucking my father.
Frank: The only Valentine's Day cards I get are from my mother. How pathetic is that?
Jim: I was dreaming about God. Mother: What did he say? Jim: Nothing. [smiles] Jim: He was playing tennis.
