So I told Robert from the start that if we couldn't get Charles and Max to take part, but especially Charles, that I didn't want to make the film. So would he call his mother and talk to Charles and see if Charles would at all be interested.

Surely, if Mother Nature had been consulted, she would never have consented to building a city in New Orleans.

Oh yeah, I believe in God. I think there's much more evidence that there is a God than that there isn't. I don't believe that Mother Theresa and Hitler go to the same place.

Not so cold, some snow fell. I went inside the log cabin and said goodbye to Mother, she was so alike grandmother, just younger.

There was one very special scene at the end of the film. My character, Zhao Di, has been sick. She wakes up and her mother tells her that the man she loves has come back from the city and had spent the day by her bedside.

A mother-in-law is better than a single and childless political persona, though.

I wanted to become a kindergarten teacher like my mother.

Becoming a mother cannot help but change things. An author's life is reflected in their writing, whether they want it to be or not, and parenthood is one of the biggest life changes there is.

I had a friend whose family had dinner together. The mother would tuck you in at night and make breakfast in the morning. They even had a spare bike for a friend. It just seemed so amazing to me.

My mother tells this story that when I first went to school, I thought I was going to help the teachers. I didn't realise I was going to get educated.

My mother did literally hitchhike barefoot to the country store.

I had this whole ritual with my mother making the bed with me inside it so I would be invisible.

I'm a mother, I'm a journalist, I'm an American; I'm all of those things, and it really complicates your job when you have all these things come into play.

If my mother knew I did this for a living, she'd kill me. She thinks I'm selling dope.

Just got back from a pleasure trip: I took my mother-in-law to the airport.