My mother said to me 'If you are a soldier you will become a general. If you are a monk you will become the Pope.' Instead I was a painter and became Picasso.

The natural state of motherhood is unselfishness. When you become a mother you are no longer the center of your own universe. You relinquish that position to your children.

I saw six men kicking and punching the mother-in-law. My neighbour said 'Are you going to help?' I said 'No six should be enough.'

Even if society dictates that men and women should behave in certain ways it is fathers and mothers who teach those ways to children not just in the words they say but in the lives they lead.

Mothers - especially single mothers - are heroic in their efforts to raise our nation's children but men must also take responsibility for their children and recognize the impact they have on their families' well-being.

Women have always been the strong ones of the world. The men are always seeking from women a little pillow to put their heads down on. They are always longing for the mother who held them as infants.

Men are what their mothers made them.

My mother was told she couldn't go to medical school because she was a woman and a Jew. So she became a teacher in the New York City public school system.

When I was born I was so ugly the doctor slapped my mother.

My father and mother were second cousins though they did not meet till shortly before their marriage.

I grew up in a Hindu household but went to a Roman Catholic school. I grew up with a mother who said 'I'll arrange a marriage for you at 18 ' but she also said that we could achieve anything we put our minds to an encourage us to dream of becoming prime minister or president.

My father was a Catholic but my mother wasn't. She had to do that weird deal you do as a Catholic - they deign to sanction your marriage and you have to bring your children up as Catholics.

My parents had a wonderful marriage but it was a very dependent relationship. My mother was entirely dependent on my father because that's how it was in those days.

My father was a soldier and my mother was a great mover. She once counted up how many places she had lived in during the first 25 years of her marriage and it came to 20.

There is a big misconception about arranged marriage. Yes it can mean that you meet someone and then have to marry them but this was my mother saying 'I'm going to introduce you to so-and-so - If you don't like them fair enough.'

My parents had an arranged marriage as did so many other people when I was growing up. My father came and had a life in the United States one way and my mother had a different one and I was very aware of those things. I continue to wonder about it and I will continue to write about it.

My mother brave woman lost her whole family when she decided to marry a black man in the '60s. When the marriage fell apart she had to come back to her family.