Compared to some of our neighbours, it's not frowned upon to be a mother and work in France.
Thanks to my mother, people tell me I look younger than I am, especially without make-up. And I suppose my father had a part in making me more frugal with my money.
A little girl who finds a puzzle frustrating might ask her busy mother (or teacher) for help. The child gets one message if her mother expresses clear pleasure at the request and quite another if mommy responds with a curt 'Don't bother me - I've got important work to do.'
My love for artichokes comes from when I was very young. My mother and father would slice the hearts and fry them, and they would be crispy around the leaves and tender at the base.
My mother was a full-time mother. She didn't have much of her own career, her own life, her own experiences... everything was for her children. I will never be as good a mother as she was. She was just grace incarnate. She was the most generous, loving - she's better than me.
I'd say just go with the flow. And I take my hat off to any mother out there who works full-time and raises a family as well. It's hard work.
I'll never forget the time my mother showed up with her best friend and two daughters, and all four of us dressed up in matching clothes, shoes and hats to go pick up my brother from school. I thought it was a fun thing to do, but we stepped outside my brother's school and he was mortified!
I've lost both parents in the last two years, so you pick up on that stuff. That's the most terrible thing about being an author - standing there at your mother's funeral, but you don't switch the author off. So your own innermost thoughts are grist for the mill.
My mother and my father are both very funny people, and they're both artistic in their own right. Oftentimes, we get very dramatic about things, but we also laugh really hard.
If my mother hadn't laughed at the funny things I did, I probably wouldn't be a comic actor. After she had her first heart attack, the doctor said, 'Try to make her laugh.' And that was the first time I tried to make anyone laugh.
In many ways I'm similar to Barack Obama, who also has a strange name but was raised by a white American mother. His background is far more complicated than his name would suggest. Furthermore, the fact that I was a child during the hostage crisis has caused me to equate being Iranian with being alienated.
My father had a real short fuse. He had a tough life - had to support his mother and brother at a very young age when his dad's farm collapsed. You could see his suffering, his terrible suffering, living a life that was disappointing and looking for another one. My father was full of terrifying anger.
My mother insisted that I pursue music. I rented out my father's musical equipment and earned some money. As a child, I wasn't sure about a career goal, but I was always fascinated by electronic gadgets, specially musical equipment.
I realized I didn't just want to parent children in my own little home but to mother the whole world. What's the point of gaining influence if you're not going to use it?
There is always room for losers in the football business. They are the mother's milk of gambling, and why not? Somebody has to do it, or there won't be any winners.
In search of my mother's garden, I found my own.
I come from a long line of below-stairs maids and gardeners. Good ol' peasant stock. My mother and her sister made a quantum leap out of that life. Then I made another quantum leap.
My mother's life had been destroyed by the Garland legend.
The sicker mother got, the stranger the people surrounding her became. I called them The Garland Freaks.
My mother was a phoenix who always expected to rise from the ashes of her latest disaster. She loved being Judy Garland.
