My mother said to me 'If you are a soldier you will become a general. If you are a monk you will become the Pope.' Instead I was a painter and became Picasso.

The natural state of motherhood is unselfishness. When you become a mother you are no longer the center of your own universe. You relinquish that position to your children.

I saw six men kicking and punching the mother-in-law. My neighbour said 'Are you going to help?' I said 'No six should be enough.'

Even if society dictates that men and women should behave in certain ways it is fathers and mothers who teach those ways to children not just in the words they say but in the lives they lead.

Mothers - especially single mothers - are heroic in their efforts to raise our nation's children but men must also take responsibility for their children and recognize the impact they have on their families' well-being.

Women have always been the strong ones of the world. The men are always seeking from women a little pillow to put their heads down on. They are always longing for the mother who held them as infants.

Men are what their mothers made them.

My mother was told she couldn't go to medical school because she was a woman and a Jew. So she became a teacher in the New York City public school system.

When I was born I was so ugly the doctor slapped my mother.

My father and mother were second cousins though they did not meet till shortly before their marriage.