My mother was a big influence; she was exceedingly chic, completely dressed in a completely different manner than I did. I was a child of the Depression, so she taught me all about accessories, and I always tell everybody she worships at the altar of the accessory.
My father is conservative but has always supported my decisions. He lets me take my own decisions. His only condition while allowing me to come to Mumbai was that my mother must accompany me.
My family is extremely supportive of me. My mother has been accompanying me to the shoots, and my father used to drive me around for auditions.
Prenatal education can only be an unconscious result of what the parents, particularly the mother, do. If, until the child is born, the mother acts in such a way that she expresses what is morally and intellectually correct, then what she accomplishes in her own continuing education will transfer to the child.
My neighborhood was rough, but I live a great life now. I don't fight that much now. I don't look for it anyway, but if someone hits your mother, whether you're a star, an accountant, or an astronaut or anything... I mean it's your mother, so I lost my mind.
I always credited my mother with inspiring me to be a writer because she was such a passionate reader. She read poetry to me as a child. But rather late in life, I've come to appreciate my father, the accountant. He was a solid, organized, get-the-job-done kind of person-and you need that piece of it to be a writer, too.
When a father puts in long hours at work, he's praised for being dedicated and ambitious. But when a mother stays late at the office, she's sometimes accused of being selfish, neglecting her kids.
Enthusiasm is the mother of effort, and without it nothing great was ever achieved.
After my parents' divorce in the early seventies, I grew up with my mother, who wasn't super educated herself. But there were a lot of kids from the subcontinent in the neighbourhood, many of whom were academic achievers. So my sister and I grew up around them, and both of us did well in school.
There are things coming from me that I felt I wanted to talk about. My search for my own blend of spirituality, my acknowledgement of my sexuality, my being the single mother of a young man.
Within the family unit, you have people you grew up with who are supposed to be your brother, father, or your mother who are almost like strangers and acquaintances.
Among many of my friends and acquaintances, I seem to be one of the very few individuals who felt or feels no ambivalence about my mother. All my feelings for my mother were positive, very strong and abiding.
Mother's love is peace. It need not be acquired, it need not be deserved.
My mother worked for a woman, Maria Ley-Piscator, who with her husband founded the Dramatic Workshop, which was connected to the New School. My mother did proofreading and typing and stuff or her, and as part of her payment, I was able to take acting classes there on Saturdays when I was 10.
My story starts with my dad, a black boy born to a single mother in a small town in North Carolina. It starts with my parents meeting in Washington, D.C., in the '60s, at a time of incredible activism.
I am not, at the end of the day, a mother, a wife, a writer, an activist, a friend. I am a child of God. That's who I was when I came into this world and who I'll be when I leave it. No one can take that from me.
My mother is an actress, and she used to drag me from theater to theater and reading to reading.
I grew up around the theatre. My mother is an actress. I would fall asleep on tons of theatre chairs. It's in my blood; it's in my spirit and my fabric of who I am.
My mother used to always say to me, 'Do naught, get naught.' It's an adage that I hold by. If you don't do anything, you can't really expect anything.
In the beginning, Adam was instructed to earn the bread by the sweat of his brow - not Eve. Contrary to conventional wisdom, a mother's place is in the home!
