Family life was wonderful. The streets were bleak. The playgrounds were bleak. But home was always warm. My mother and father had a great relationship. I always felt 'safe' there.

My grandfather's family used to own a pasta factory in Naples and they would go door-to-door selling their pasta. So his love of food came from his parents which was then passed down to my mother and then again to me.

My sense of the family history is somewhat sketchy because my mother kept a great deal to herself.

My mother at least twice cancelled our family's subscription to the newspaper I was working on because she was so mad about its treatment of my father.

I hurt my wife my kids my mother my wife's family my friends my foundation and kids all around the world who admired me.

I was raised by a single mother who made a way for me. She used to scrub floors as a domestic worker put a cleaning rag in her pocketbook and ride the subways in Brooklyn so I would have food on the table. But she taught me as I walked her to the subway that life is about not where you start but where you're going. That's family values.

My mother has always been the social glue holding the family together.

There are no adequate substitutes for father mother and children bound together in a loving commitment to nurture and protect. No government no matter how well-intentioned can take the place of the family in the scheme of things.

The most remarkable thing about my mother is that for thirty years she served the family nothing but leftovers. The original meal has never been found.

My mother's love has always been a sustaining force for our family and one of my greatest joys is seeing her integrity her compassion her intelligence reflected in my daughters.