mother

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 have always been a flirt. My mother says whe I was a child, I used to stand outside the house and just smile at everyone who walked by. Like, 'Please take me with you!'

God blessed me with two unbelievable parents, and I am just like both of them. I have the smile and charisma of my mother and the big heart of my mom, because she wants to save the world and help the world, so I am just like her.

I try to keep people happy. I go out of my way to get a smile. That's the way my mother raised me.

My mother, may her soul rest in peace, shaped my personality; thanks to her, I have acquired many values, good traits and skills.

Being a new mother was a joyful and sometimes overwhelming experience - and as the first Missouri female state legislator to have a baby while in office, having heath care for myself and my son gave me some needed peace of mind.

The greatest destroyer of peace is abortion because if a mother can kill her own child, what is left for me to kill you and you to kill me? There is nothing between.

Stone Mountain, Georgia, still had Ku Klux Klan marches, and I had a wild and courageous mother who'd put us in the car to watch them. She wanted us to know those things existed.

A suburban mother's role is to deliver children obstetrically once, and by car forever after.

When my mother and I walked to the grocery store, men would circle the block in cars. It was very, very scary, especially as a young boy. Very predatory - a hunt.

My first car was, as depicted in 'Sleepwalk with Me,' my mother's '92 Volvo station wagon that had 80,000 miles on it, and I had put 40,000 miles on it, so by the time it retired it had 120,000, and I basically killed it. It served me well, and my mechanic was always very angry with me because I just didn't properly care for it.

I thought boxes were the best toy. When my parents got a new car, I ran to my mother and said, 'Did it come in a box?'

My mother was determined to make us independent. When I was four years old, she stopped the car a few miles from our house and made me find my own way home across the fields. I got hopelessly lost.

I was always an observer, even as a child. I could be satisfied to sit in a car for 3 hours and just look at the street go by while my mother went shopping.

My mother's sister was killed in a trolley car accident, so I was raised as one of eight with my sister and six male cousins.

I enjoy racing historic motorcars from the '50s and '60s. The seed of my interest was planted when I was about 12 years old and took over my mother's Morris Minor. I drove it around my father's farm. But my favorite car is still a McLaren F1, which I have had for 10 years.

When I was born, the wisdom was that homosexuality was an illness; that it was caused largely by somebody's mother, and a distorted relationship with the mother. And now, as I live my life - married to a husband, with kids - it's an identity.

I'm not a mom, but I think the word 'mother' is about wisdom.