When I was born I was so ugly the doctor slapped my mother.

My father and mother were second cousins though they did not meet till shortly before their marriage.

I grew up in a Hindu household but went to a Roman Catholic school. I grew up with a mother who said 'I'll arrange a marriage for you at 18 ' but she also said that we could achieve anything we put our minds to an encourage us to dream of becoming prime minister or president.

My father was a Catholic but my mother wasn't. She had to do that weird deal you do as a Catholic - they deign to sanction your marriage and you have to bring your children up as Catholics.

My parents had a wonderful marriage but it was a very dependent relationship. My mother was entirely dependent on my father because that's how it was in those days.

My father was a soldier and my mother was a great mover. She once counted up how many places she had lived in during the first 25 years of her marriage and it came to 20.

There is a big misconception about arranged marriage. Yes it can mean that you meet someone and then have to marry them but this was my mother saying 'I'm going to introduce you to so-and-so - If you don't like them fair enough.'

My parents had an arranged marriage as did so many other people when I was growing up. My father came and had a life in the United States one way and my mother had a different one and I was very aware of those things. I continue to wonder about it and I will continue to write about it.

My mother brave woman lost her whole family when she decided to marry a black man in the '60s. When the marriage fell apart she had to come back to her family.

My parents separated when I was four. It wasn't the smoothest of divorces but then as my mother always says 'You can't have a passionate marriage without a passionate divorce.'

My parents separated when I was four. It wasn't the smoothest of divorces but then as my mother always says you can't have a passionate marriage without a passionate divorce.

My argument is simple which is that for several thousand years in Western civilization marriage has been the union of one man and one woman. Research is overwhelming that children need mothers and fathers.

Same-sex marriage would eliminate entirely in law the basic idea of a mother and a father for every child. It would create a society which deliberately chooses to deprive a child of either a mother or a father.

Marriage is the mother of the world. It preserves kingdoms and fills cities and churches and heaven itself.

Now I'm a wife and a mother of two. It's a really different role. I always referred to No Doubt as a marriage because that's what it's like to be together for so long and go through what we've been through. I can't really have that relationship with them anymore.

I was a bartender for a long time so I know how to make drinks but I'm more likely to offer them than to have them. I think this is one of the reasons why I get to live longer than my great-grandmother did and why I get to produce more writing than she did and why my marriage isn't in dire straits.

My mother had a son from previous marriage and her husband died in Second World War.

When you're a father in a marriage you sort of become the mother's assistant. And you sort of get a list from her every day and you run down the list and it feels very much like a chore.

A woman has two smiles that an angel might envy the smile that accepts a lover before words are uttered and the smile that lights on the first born babe and assures it of a mother's love.

The love of a mother is the veil of a softer light between the heart and the heavenly Father.

Mothers are the people who love us for no good reason. And those of us who are mothers know it's the most exquisite love of all.

Love matches so called have illusion for their father and need for their mother.

You don't have to deserve your mother's love. You have to deserve your father's.

A father may turn his back on his child brothers and sisters may become inveterate enemies husbands may desert their wives wives their husbands. But a mother's love endures through all.