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My mother's idea of natural childbirth was giving birth without makeup. She was hyper-positive - the world is a wonderful place, rainbows and unicorns. If you said anything contrary to her, you were basically exiled.

That something that I fought so hard for throughout the beginning of my career is I didn't want to pancake my skin a lighter color to fit into the... ballet. I wanted to be myself. I didn't want to have to wear makeup that made my nose look thinner.

I complained to my mother about wanting to look less like myself and more like my friends. My mother then gave me a lesson in embracing my differences and loving them despite what others said.

My mother was totally different from the mothers of my friends. She would never separate from me. In a way, my life belongs to her. When I was a child, she complained that I was anorexic, so they sent me to places to get me to eat. When I look at pictures of myself, I was just a normal-looking child. It was her fantasy.

My mother didn't want me to be a feminist, a radical, political person, because she was scared. She wanted me to be protected and safe, but my life never was.

My mother tried her best to give us a sense of self-esteem.

My mother was a wonderful, wonderful woman with a lovely voice who hated housework, hated cooking even more and loved her children. She was always arranging church activities such as a bazaar.

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.

My mother and my father were very nurturing and wonderful examples of how to live your life. I really had a cool foundation.

My mother cared a lot about clothes. It was a point of friction because when I was a teenager, and I only wanted to wear my father's shirts, and I never wanted to wear makeup, she would say: 'Put on lipstick.' That was her thing.