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Happy the boy whose mother is tired of talking nonsense to him before he is old enough to know the sense of it.

My mother is very, very smart and commands respect because she has a lot of respect for herself.

Mum says that, since I was a tiny baby, I've had the most strong-willed and stubborn personality known to man. Although that was a real pain for her, she admired my resolve.

The 'good' mother, with her fixed smile, her rigidity, her goody-goody outlook, her obsession with unnecessary hygiene, is in fact a fool. It is the 'bad' mother, unafraid of a joke and a glass of wine, richly self-expressive, scornful of suburban values, who is, in reality, good.

I've always been told I was extremely well-behaved as a kid.

I am my father's daughter: I have his language, his expressions.

My father was not a bully. I almost never heard him raise his voice to anybody.

He who speaks without modesty will find it difficult to make his words good.

Who's a boy gonna talk to if not his mother?

A loving mother-son relationship is always a plot or outwitting of some kind. 'Don't tell anyone, but...' my mother was always saying to me - when I wasn't saying it to her.