I have always detested any departure from reality an attitude which I relate to my mother's poor mental health.

When I was a child I asked my mother what homosexuality was about and she said - and this was 100 years ago in Germany and she was very open-minded - 'It's like hair color. It's nothing. Some people are blond and some people have dark hair. It's not a subject.' This was a very healthy attitude.

I owe much to mother. She had an expert's understanding but also approached art emotionally.

In fact in many ways my mother was quite hippy-dippy serving macrobiotic food and reading 'Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.'

My culture-deprived aspirational mother dragged me once a month from our northern suburb - where the word art never came up - to the Art Institute of Chicago. I hated it.

There is nothing in the world of art like the songs mother used to sing.

The art of motherhood involves much silent unobtrusive self-denial an hourly devotion which finds no detail too minute.

The mother art is architecture. Without an architecture of our own we have no soul of our own civilization.

My mother and stepfather were married 43 years so I have watched a long marriage. I feel like I had a very good role model for that. And you know it's just a number.

I'm not sure I make old bones in parliament. It's an amazing experience to have had but I can't see myself being Mother of the House.