Our children await Christmas presents like politicians getting in election returns: there's the Uncle Fred precinct and the Aunt Ruth district still to come in.

Spending two years on my uncle's ranch in Montana as a young man gave me the wisdom and the thrust to do westerns.

I had two family members involved in World War I: two great-uncles. One of them is on a memorial in France. And the other was a trench runner who survived the war. The average life span of a trench runner was 36 hours but he survived the whole war.

If I could write a story that would do for the Indian one-hundredth part what 'Uncle Tom's Cabin' did for the Negro I would be thankful the rest of my life.

IT is mere coincidence that Cooper was born in the year which produced The Power of Sympathy and that when he died Uncle Tom's Cabin was passing through its serial stage and yet the limits of his life mark almost exactly the first great period of American fiction.

I think that everybody in the world whatever colour or creed has a jerk like JR in his or her family somewhere. Whether it is a father uncle cousin or brother everybody can identify with JR and that certainly had something to do with the success of 'Dallas.'

We all remember where we were and we all remember what we were doing. I had a brother in New York an uncle lots of friends in New York. It made me angry it made me sad what could I do.

It doesn't work if the bad guys kill his mother's uncle's friend's neighbor's pet dog. You've got to make the stakes high.

As parents grandparents uncles and aunts we need to start getting out into nature with the young people in our lives. Families play a key role in getting kids outside.

People often complain that music is too ambiguous that what they should think when they hear it is so unclear whereas everyone understands words. With me it is exactly the opposite and not only with regard to an entire speech but also with individual words.