I am the grandson of immigrants from Japan who went to America, boldly going to a strange new world, seeking new opportunities. My mother was born in Sacramento, California. My father was a San Franciscan. They met and married in Los Angeles, and I was born there.
Our society loves raw character; we love raw women. We don't love our mother because she is hot and sexy: we love our mother because she is our mother. We love our granny because she is our granny. We value her. We don't remember anyone's face from our childhood; we love our granny's face.
My Italian granny and my mother made great spaghetti, but it wasn't a kind of southern Italian, Godfather-esque kind of thing - it was a wonderful, big mixing pot of all kinds of people - when you came home from school and your mum wasn't in, there were lots of people you could go to.
My mother often mailed me articles from 'Reader's Digest' about advances in DNA chemistry. No matter how I tried to explain it to her, she never grasped the concept that I could have been writing those articles, that something I had invented made most of those DNA discoveries possible.
The picture of Mother Teresa that I remember from my childhood is of a short, sari-wearing woman scurrying down a red gravel path between manicured lawns. She would have in tow one or two slower-footed, sari-clad young Indian nuns. We thought her a freak. Probably we'd picked up on unvoiced opinions of our Loreto nuns.
It was nearly midnight on the night of February 26, 1806, and Alexandre Dumas, the future author of 'The Count of Monte Cristo' and 'The Three Musketeers,' was asleep at his uncle's house. He was not yet four years old. He was staying there because his father was gravely ill, and his mother thought it best for him not to be at home.
My mother is a great artist, but she always treated her paintings like minor postcards. Had she pursued it, she would have been a great artist. Instead, she looked down on her art.
My mother is my biggest role model, and she showed me how to do it right. She was very present in our lives and has a great career of her own. Same with my father. So I knew it was possible going in to stay closely connected to my children while also chasing big dreams. And it's given me great perspective.
I started cooking from watching my mom. My mother was a really, really great cook.
My mom wasn't so much such a great cook. But I don't know, I think I have a very strong mother, and it's funny, because both of my sisters - I have two sisters, and I'm the baby, but they all work hard. I'm not sure where I get it from, and I'm not sure where they get it from, but they must get it from somewhere... I like to work.
Only a great genius like the Victorian novelist Elizabeth Gaskell can be mother, wife and novelist without solitude. I couldn't write until my youngest child went to school, and then I began - the first morning - and I've never stopped.
I could do no wrong in my mother's eyes from the day I was born. My fans bought her a very nice house in San Antonio, and she has a great life.
I think that every Saturday, we ought to say, 'My father's a Jew, my mother was a Jew, and I'm a Jew,' with great pride.
As the mother of two daughters, I have great respect for women. And I don't ever want to lose that.
It was so satisfying for me - a great reward, just to see it done well. And it was beautifully directed by my daughter Susan Riskin. Imagine, a play about my mother directed by my daughter?!
My mother is a great source of advice and wisdom and consolation for me.
Many great stories are father issues, mother issues or death.
I was used to theatre classes. I studied with my mother; she was a theatre teacher and directed, too, so it was very family-like. Then I studied with a great teacher in Paris, and she was wonderful; she pushed me, but she was a warm soul.
My mother, twenty-two, was Harriet Gautier Brooks, named for her paternal grandmother, but always called Hallie. My father, twenty-six, was Albert Horton Foote, named for his father and great-grandfather, and I was named Albert Horton Foote, Jr.
My father, John, ran the Dowd Insurance Co. in town, which was started by his great-grandfather. My mother, Dolores, was a homemaker who kept an eye on all of us.
