Watching a whole cluster of friends, and my own mother, die over quite a short space of time convinced me that purely materialist 'explanations' for our mysterious human existence simply won't do - on an intellectual level.
A. N. Wilson
If a country is to be corruption free and become a nation of beautiful minds, I strongly feel there are three key societal members who can make a difference. They are the father, the mother and the teacher.
A. P. J. Abdul Kalam
My mother's belief in spiritual healers grew stronger after our family went through a rough patch following my father's death. Sufi saint Karimullah Shah Kadri changed our lives, and all of us converted to Sufism. But it wasn't an instantaneous decision - it took us 10 years to convert. The change in religion was like washing away the past.
A. R. Rahman
My mother insisted that I pursue music. I rented out my father's musical equipment and earned some money. As a child, I wasn't sure about a career goal, but I was always fascinated by electronic gadgets, specially musical equipment.
While my mother wanted me to be a musician, I wanted to become an electronic engineer.
I grew up with that completely fictive idea of motherhood, where the mother never strayed from the kitchen. All the women in my books are very afraid that if they do anything with their minds they won't be complete women. I don't think my daughters' generation has that feeling.
A. S. Byatt
I feel betrayed by own mother.
Aaron Carter
My father, I think he played percussion in high school. My mother played piano when she was very young, but only for a brief while. I don't think she had a great teacher. In any case, neither of them were really into music at a young age.
Aaron Diehl
Shortly after I was born he emigrated to Durban, where members of my mother's family had settled at the turn of the century, and the rest of the family followed soon thereafter.
Aaron Klug
Through the years, I found we had Native American blood in us. My great-grandmother came from the island of Martinique, and they hooked up with the Native Americans of Louisiana.
Aaron Neville
Growing up my mother played Sarah Vaughan and Nat Cole in the house regularly.
I started listening to gospel when I was a little boy and my grandmother used to rock me on her lap.
My mother turned me onto St. Jude back in the days when I was wild and crazy. She took me to the shrine on Rampart Street.
My mother and my grandmother are pioneers of Mexican cuisine in this country, so I grew up in the kitchen. My mom, Zarela Martinez, was by far my biggest influence and inspiration - and toughest critic.
Aaron Sanchez
I wish I had a dollar for every pro-choicer who told me that abortion has to be accessible for poor women... as if being poor makes you an unfit mother.
Abby Johnson
We can be mothers and have careers. We can finish our education with children in tow. Is it a challenge? Yep. But women are made for challenges. We are strong enough to handle the challenges presented to us. It's what we were made to do.
I am definitely not the best wife, and no one has nominated me for 'Mother of the Year.'
I hate what I look like on TV, and I want to look better, and nothing makes the mothers more jealous.
Abby Lee Miller
My mother taught children to love to dance.
From a pretty early age, my mother realized that I was a little bit more gifted and talented than my own age group. So, she moved me over to play with the boys' travel soccer team when I was about 11 years old.
Abby Wambach
To get to the only club in my area you had to cross a really busy road and my mother forbade me from going there.
I believe strongly in the rights of women... my mother is a woman, my sister is a woman, my daughter is a woman, my wife is a woman.
My mother is very fond of cooking and whenever I am home she ensures that I eat the best food prepared by her, because of which I gain a lot of weight.
My father is a scientist , my mother a teacher, my brother is a Naval Officer and I am an entertainer - we all are doing out a bit for our country!
By the grace of God, my parents were fantastic. We were a very normal family, and we have had a very middle-class Indian upbringing. We were never made to realise who we were or that my father and mother were huge stars - it was a very normal house, and I'd like my daughter to have the same thing.
I was a pretty heartbroken 13-year-old. That was the year my grandmother died and my parents split up.
My mother came to see me in a play when I was a student, and afterwards, I asked her what she thought. She said, 'Honest opinion? No.'
Well, knowledge is a fine thing, and mother Eve thought so; but she smarted so severely for hers, that most of her daughters have been afraid of it since.
When you make your first film at 47 and anybody but your mother goes to see it, to me, that's a miracle.
No mother should worry about dying during childbirth in the twenty-first century - and rising maternal death rates in the United States should spark alarm for lawmakers and the general public.
In an industrialized country as advanced as the United States, no mother should have the fear of dying during childbirth or in the following months.
To prevent the death of mothers across our country, we must expand research, implement researched best practices, and fiercely work to understand why African American, Hispanic, and Native American mothers die at even higher rates than white mothers.
My mother was a teacher.
As a child, I went to peace and ERA marches on the back of my mom and grandmother. Through them I learned that I wanted to find a way to make the world a more kind, compassionate place.
All that I am, or hope to be, I owe to my angel mother.
I remember my mother's prayers and they have always followed me. They have clung to me all my life.
Let reverence for the laws be breathed by every American mother to the lisping babe that prattles on her lap - let it be taught in schools, in seminaries, and in colleges; let it be written in primers, spelling books, and in almanacs; let it be preached from the pulpit, proclaimed in legislative halls, and enforced in courts of justice.
In America, we have always taken it as an article of faith that we 'battle' cancer; we attack it with knives, we poison it with chemotherapy or we blast it with radiation. If we are fortunate, we 'beat' the cancer. If not, we are posthumously praised for having 'succumbed after a long battle.'
My mother pretty much raised me to be a free spirit. Anything my father would say, she would tell me, 'No, it's like this.'
Did I collect baseball cards? I've got 10 books full of plastic in my mother's house. All the Upper Decks, the Fleers, the Fleer Ultras. My grandfather brought me to the trade shows. I collected Marvel cards, too.
My father and my mother were professional footballers and have also been coaches.
My parents were Zionists born in Poland. My father was a rabbi who didn't know much about science and ran a grocery store in the neighborhood with my mother's help.
My grandmother played a huge influence in my life and helped raise me, and she and my mother saw how much I loved pro wrestling and how much I wanted to go after it.
My grandmother was one of the most loving, caring, and supportive people I've ever met.
The thing that I think a lot of guys need to know how to do is not take your mother's advice about honesty being the best policy. Listen to your cool, drunk uncle who tells you to lie. Those are the relationships that last.
The support of my mother has made such a difference in my life, sacrificing everything to make sure that we went to school, did our homework, got an education. That was one person supporting me, and it takes more than one person in our community to help raise our children.
My mother was always supportive.
My mother is really the person I learned to curse from. She discourages me from saying that in interviews. But it's true.
My mother and father met through climbing and it was totally natural that I would become a climber too.
My wife is an amazing mother - like, top five of all time.
