A lot of times when people become successful, people don't really understand what they had to do or the sacrifices they made to do that, or they assume that they had money. This is coming from, like, a kid who was broke and lived with roaches and a single mom in Dorchester.

My mom used to call us 'free range kids,' like free range chickens... We roamed the countryside.

I'm not blaming my mom for my life because I am responsible for me, and nobody can change me or ruin me easier than I can.

When I was six years old my friend was auditioning for 'Annie,' and I decided I wanted to audition with her. My mom was worried I would fall flat on my face because I'd never opened my mouth to sing, so she sent me to vocal lessons. I did the audition and fell in love with the entire process of a show.

I'm a first - I was the first person in my family born in the United States. My mom is from Croatia, and my dad is from Iran. They met at music school in Belgium. I grew up as a pianist. I was really interested in piano and sort of discovered that I was a writer when I was about 13 and started writing.

I was four or five, and my mom got all the Power Rangers to come through. I thought it was really them. I started crying tears of joy. It was so amazing. My favorite Power Ranger was the green one. He wasn't in every episode - he was rare, like Based God. He was like the Based God Power Ranger.

I was 13 when I developed the classic symptoms of a person who gets diabetes: a lot of weight loss, a tremendous thirst, and blurry eyesight. My mom took me to the hospital, and the doctors took some blood tests. My blood sugar was so high that they knew right away.

We take the shortest route to the puck and arrive in ill humor.

With the glucometer, I always know how much blood sugar I've got, so I can adjust my insulin or the food I eat.

I didn't want the children to grow up and, when asked what their mother did, say, 'Oh, Mom's a gun moll in the movies.'

When you have a new baby, you can get really overwhelmed, since it's such a huge responsibility. You're thrilled to be a mom, but your sleep schedule is so thrown off and it can be scary if you don't have a good support system.

The best part about playing a mom is that people hug moms. I get hugs all the time. It really makes hard days a lot easier, and easy days are downright joyous.

People say the top part of my face looks like my dad's and the bottom part like my mom's. I have his eyes and her nose and mouth.

One moment I can be happy and laughing, but then it comes over me. It's my mom.

Shortly after my dad died, my mom figured that if I could do a few commercials, I'd get a college fund.

We're getting ready to take over the world. My group of girlfriends - we're renegades.

A group of us started a community center in Santa Monica. We've tried different programs, and three have worked really well. A poetry group. Once a week we visit Venice High and talk to girls at risk.

'Bridesmaids,' I think, opened up a door to allow women to show a bunch of different women in different ways of being funny. It was kind of like an arrival moment.

Most visitors to Amsterdam will wander into the red-light district out of sheer curiosity. The narrow streets are mostly safe day and night - just don't try to take pictures of the women working in the windows.

There are many women with children under five who want to work and who lack affordable, high-quality child care.

From birth to age 18 a girl needs good parents. From 18 to 35 she needs good looks. From 35 to 55 she needs a good personality. From 55 on, she needs good cash.

The connections between and among women are the most feared, the most problematic, and the most potentially transforming force on the planet.

The moment of change is the only poem.

Poetry is above all a concentration of the power of language, which is the power of our ultimate relationship to everything in the universe.

Why do grandparents and grandchildren get along so well? The mother.

I had to work hard to keep up with my mom. That's where I learned it from. She's a freak.

My advantage as a woman and a human being has been in having a mother who believed strongly in women's education. She was an early undergraduate at Oxford, and her own mother was a doctor.

Bless my mom. Mom is everything to me.

I hope I can be as good of a father to my son as my dad was to me.

Microchimeric sharing means that, even if the mother loses a child, she'll have a small memento of him or her secreted away inside her. Similarly, a bit of our mothers live on in all of us no matter how long ago Mom died.

Those of us raised in modern cities tend to notice horizontal and vertical lines more quickly than lines at other orientations. In contrast, people raised in nomadic tribes do a better job noticing lines skewed at intermediate angles, since Mother Nature tends to work with a wider array of lines than most architects.

Even fictional characters sometimes receive unwarranted medical opinions. Doctors have diagnosed Ebenezer Scrooge with OCD, Sherlock Holmes with autism, and Darth Vader with borderline personality disorder.

Women's strong qualities have become despised because of their weakness. The obvious remedy is to create a feminine character with all the strength of Superman plus all the allure of a good and beautiful woman.

Every crisis offers you extra desired power.

I speak Spanish to God, Italian to women, French to men, and German to my horse.

My mother was a personal friend of God's. They had ongoing conversations.

When you really believe in God, it gives you a courage, a confidence that enables you to meet the things coming.

My doctor explained that exercise and diet changes might help and that I also might need a medication.

We always have dinner together as a family - even when our schedules are totally hectic. I inherited that from my mom, who would come home from her ad agency job to eat with us before going back to work.

For a decade, I was a stay-at-home mom. I sent my husband to his law office, sat on PTA boards and baked cookies - great cookies. All of a sudden, I had no husband, no job, few prospects, and two small children who had grown accustomed to eating.

What motivated me? My mother. My mother was an immigrant woman, a peasant woman, struggled all her life, worked in the garment center.

My Mom and Dad did it pretty good, so I know it can work. The foremost thing I would say about working with Robin and Sean is that they were devoted to this project and devoted to their characters. You can't ask for any more from talented actors like that.

My mother worked in factories, worked as a domestic, worked in a restaurant, always had a second job.

Be prepared, work hard, and hope for a little luck. Recognize that the harder you work and the better prepared you are, the more luck you might have.

I have no regrets. I had an amazing surrogate who carried my son for me. I am so grateful to her. I can even say I am grateful for having cancer. I was always meant to be a mom, but if I didn't have cancer, I never would have had Zev. I would have had a kid, but not Zev, and I want Zev - tantrums and all.

I work out every day, and I eat 1,200 calories. Here's the truth - like I've said to everybody, 'Every diet works if you follow the diet.'

Every year, there is a new diet that all the celebs or housewives are trying. We all want the perfect diet or the perfect pill. If we surveyed a million women, and they could choose to learn the truth about God or the foolproof diet, I guarantee more women would pick the miracle diet over the miracle of life.

My parents, especially my mother, were no influence on me whatsoever.

My kids have grown up knowing that their mom made a big investment in making sure there was art and language instruction in school and books in the library. Hopefully, they've internalized that.

Mysteries always have the potential for interesting connections between the elements. I'm also most interested in the relationship between the characters. As in 'Masterpiece,' I'm trying to create characters who not only are solving a mystery but are solving the riddle of their own personal relationships.