Maternal Legacy Quotes

I never really consider myself an awkward person, but once I got into stand-up, I kept hearing that word. The only thing I can trace it back to is that my mom had a similar sensibility. She always made people uncomfortable.

[M]y mother fought hard for civil rights so that instead of a mop, I could hold this microphone. And while she may be proud of me tonight, I've got to tell you, Mom, I'm even more proud of you. Thank you, Mom.

For a mother the project of raising a boy is the most fulfilling project she can hope for. She can watch him, as a child, play the games she was not allowed to play; she can invest in him her ideas, aspirations, ambitions, and values - or whatever she has left of them; she can watch her son, who came from her flesh and whose life was sustained by her work and devotion, embody her in the world. So while the project of raising a boy is fraught with ambivalence and leads inevitably to bitterness, it is the only project that allows a woman to be - to be through her son, to live through her son.

My mother grew up around horses and exposed my sister and I to riding early on. It was very important to her.

I most want to be remembered for being as great a mother to James and Lennon as my mum was to me and my brother Jamie.

My mother was a great woman. To look at her from the suffering she had gone through to bring us up - 20 children: 6 girls and 14 boys, but still she taught us to be decent and to respect ourselves, and that is one of the things that has kept me going, even after she passed.

My mom kind of led me toward acting. She wanted to be an actress when she was younger. That made me interested in it when I was a kid, because she and I are very close.

My mum gave me pretty good genes in that department. She had gorgeous skin. That good English complexion. She never seemed to have a blemish that I knew of.

As I've gotten older, my mannerisms are more and more like my mom's. Also, she was an educator - she's extremely passionate about education and children. I guess I inherited that in some way.

I didn't have a mother; I had a mama. I measure other women by the stature of my mama.

I hope that I live for a thousand years, and have a thousand daughters so that there will always be a woman who can curse your name.

I always said I got my music from my dad, but my mom had these cassettes - Bjoerk and the Cocteau Twins and the Talking Heads. That was her music, and she would just get so wild and free when she listened to it.

By the blessings of heaven I mean to live and die, please God, in the faith of my mother.

My mother likes to say that I was conceived to shop - not just born to shop. My whole life as a child was following her and her sister and friends around on her shopping trips.

My mother studied English and drama at the University of Pennsylvania, where my father studied architecture. She was a great influence in all sorts of ways, a wicked wit.

If there's a gene, I got it from my ma. Her writing has this effortless quality.

My mother and grandmother both had beautiful skin.

I dedicated my first 'American Woman' series to my mother. She and millions in her generation felt they couldn't use their voices, but they taught their daughters they must use theirs.

I've felt like an outsider all my life. It comes from my mother, who always felt like an outsider in my father's family. She was a powerful woman, and she motivated my father.

The national treasure that is Diana Ross is a dim light compared with who she is as a mother. My mom paved the way not only for my career but also for who I am as a human being.

My mom's amazing 'mom skills' have set the tone for my sister Muffy to be an amazing mother herself.

My mother was a Bohemian - in the good sense of the word. A searcher. And she investigated various religions.

The greatest finish line for me was finishing college - it was a pact I made with my mother, during a time when she fell ill. That happened during my Freshman year, and unfortunately she never saw me compete in the Olympics. But she really wanted me to finish college, because she never finished Junior High.

My mother, as a girl, had remembered this woman from Maine, someone who was part of the extended family somehow, and I recall her talking about this great, risk-taking woman. There are the most amazing, heroic stories in everybody's lives.

My mother didn't teach me lessons about being Chinese as strongly as she did the notion of who I was as a female.