I was always embarrassed because my dad wore a suit and my mother wore flat pumps and a cozy jumper while my friends' parents were punks or hippies.

My mother taught public school went to Harvard and then got her master's there and taught fifth and sixth grade in a public school. My dad had a more working-class lifestyle. He didn't go to college. He was an auto mechanic and a bartender and a janitor at Harvard.

My mother and dad were big animal lovers too. I just don't know how I would have lived without animals around me. I'm fascinated by them - both domestic pets and the wild community. They just are the most interesting things in the world to me and it's made such a difference in my lifetime.

A spirit is like your mother my dad who've made it. They can come around but they come around in a loving way because they've already made it to God. Most people make it.

My dad was the district attorney of New Orleans for about 30 years. And when he opened his campaign headquarters back in the early '70s when I was 5 years old my mother wanted me to play the national anthem. And they got an upright piano on the back of a flatbed truck and I played it.

My mother raised three children on her own and my dad was a doctor working 16 hours a day.

I never saw any of my dad's stories. My mother said he had piles and piles of manuscripts.

My dad was like a stage mother he always pushed me to do what I wanted.

My father used to play with my brother and me in the yard. Mother would come out and say 'You're tearing up the grass' 'We're not raising grass ' Dad would reply. 'We're raising boys.'

Don't forget Mother's Day. Or as they call it in Beverly Hills Dad's Third Wife Day.

No man is responsible for his father. That was entirely his mother's affair.

My father was always telling himself no one was perfect not even my mother.

My father invented a cure for which there was no disease and unfortunately my mother caught it and died of it.

Babies don't need fathers but mothers do. Someone who is taking care of a baby needs to be taken care of.

My mother taught me that we all have the power to achieve our dreams. What I lacked was the courage.

I think my mother... made it clear that you have to live life by your own terms and you have to not worry about what other people think and you have to have the courage to do the unexpected.

And I love that even in the toughest moments when we're all sweating it - when we're worried that the bill won't pass and it seems like all is lost - Barack never lets himself get distracted by the chatter and the noise. Just like his grandmother he just keeps getting up and moving forward... with patience and wisdom and courage and grace.

I've been through it all baby I'm mother courage.

My mother taught me about the power of inspiration and courage and she did it with a strength and a passion that I wish could be bottled.

I love my mother Ali so much. I'm a momma's boy. I just have a very cool mom. It's not as though I had any say in the matter. I'm just really fortunate. She's the most kind loving giving woman.

Don't get me wrong magic is cool. But a nervous mother singing to her child at night while something moves quietly through the dark outside her house? That's a story. Handled properly it's more dramatic than any apocalypse or goblin army could ever be.

My mother used to take me to flea markets in my stroller and I would just rummage through the piles. You've got to dig through the overstuffed racks that everyone else just walks by. It's the only way to find the cool stuff.

You can be cool and at the same time respect your woman who will hopefully become your wife who will hopefully become the mother of your kids. America needs to get back to family values.

We all grew up our grandmothers and mothers had about three channels to watch so we watched those soaps and now a generation has grown up with the Internet and computers and video games.