My encounters with racism are sort of second-hand situations where I might be standing around with a group of white friends and someone makes a comment that they wouldn't make at my family reunion.

If you go from a structure where you have the support and that partner and that construction of a family and that's broken apart I think that's probably a lot harder than always being a single mom and having the father being a support in another area.

I eat a little bit of everything and not a lot of anything. Everything in moderation. I know that's really hard for people to understand but I grew up in an Italian family where we didn't overdo anything. We ate pasta yes but not a lot of it.

It's long been accepted as fact that the availability of family planning services saves lives. Where women have access to these services children and families are healthier and society at large benefits.

I grew up in a family of strong women and I owe any capacity I have to understand women to my mother and big sister. They taught me to respect women in a way where I've always felt a strong emotional connection to women which has also helped me in the way I approach my work as an actor.

I was one those kids who had books on them. Before weddings Bar Mitzvahs funerals and anything else where you're actually meant to not be reading my family would frisk me and take the book away. If they didn't find it by this point in the procedure I would be sitting over in that corner completely unnoticed just reading my book.

I grew up in a family where the women were just nuts. They didn't stand around in cardigans making polite conversation while they chopped tomatoes.

I have been called a nun with a switchblade where my privacy is concerned. I think there's a point where one says that's for family that's for me.

Except for naval and air exercises our military should be stationed on American soil where service men and women can lead normal lives in close proximity to family and friends.

There is an overwhelming amount of information available to us all on the web each day not to mention what is shared with us by our family friends fans and followers. This necessitates the need to filter through all that information and to decide for ourselves where to put our attention.

I love where I'm from. I don't live there because of the circumstances but all my family is there. It's what's inside it's not what's outside that determines the culture and the feeling.

When I did 'E.T. ' it sort of solidified the only family I know are these film crews. These gypsies. These filmmakers. That was the solidification and the clicking revelations of 'This is what I want to do with my life and this is where I'm going to survive.'

I know I'm talented but I wasn't put here to sing. I was put here to be a wife and a mom and look after my family. I love what I do but it's not where it begins and ends.

I was raised by a single mother who made a way for me. She used to scrub floors as a domestic worker put a cleaning rag in her pocketbook and ride the subways in Brooklyn so I would have food on the table. But she taught me as I walked her to the subway that life is about not where you start but where you're going. That's family values.

In the past 40 years the United States lost more than a million farmers and ranchers. Many of our farmers are aging. Today only nine percent of family farm income comes from farming and more and more of our farmers are looking elsewhere for their primary source of income.

The first pages of memory are like the old family Bible. The first leaves are wholly faded and somewhat soiled with handling. But when we turn further and come to the chapters where Adam and Eve were banished from Paradise then all begins to grow clear and legible.

My family kinda hit the skids. We were experiencing poverty at that point. We all got a job where the whole family had to work as security guards and janitors. And I just got angry.

I say If everybody in this house lives where it's God first friends and family second and you third we won't ever have an argument.

Where would you be without friends? The people to pick you up when you need lifting? We come from homes far from perfect so you end up almost parent and sibling to your friends - your own chosen family. There's nothing like a really loyal dependable good friend. Nothing.

We believed in our idea - a family park where parents and children could have fun- together.

I come from a family where gravy is considered a beverage.

My friends and family are my support system. They tell me what I need to hear not what I want to hear and they are there for me in the good and bad times. Without them I have no idea where I would be and I know that their love for me is what's keeping my head above the water.

The foundation of family - that's where it all begins for me.

One's family is the most important thing in life. I look at it this way: One of these days I'll be over in a hospital somewhere with four walls around me. And the only people who'll be with me will be my family.