I am the woman I grew to be partly in spite of my mother and partly because of the extraordinary love of her best friends and my own best friends' mothers and from surrogates many of whom were not women at all but gay men. I have loved them my entire life even after their passing.

All my friends' mothers were appalling women.

In their 30s women really start to live... they're not children anymore and they're not just mothers.

For any of us in this room today let's start out by admitting we're lucky. We don't live in the world our mothers lived in our grandmothers lived in where career choices for women were so limited.

All women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy. No man does. That's his.

A professional soldier understands that war means killing people war means maiming people war means families left without fathers and mothers.

Both my grandmothers had upright pianos and I just knew how to play since I was a child. Nobody taught me. I sounded like a grown-up and then I learned how to read music. I played so well by ear I could fool the teacher to believe I could play the notes. She'd make the mistake of playing the song once and I could play it.

I didn't know my mother had it. I think a lot of women don't know their mothers had it that's the sad thing about depression. You know you don't function anymore. You shut down. You feel like you are in a void.

They say geniuses mostly have great mothers. They mostly have sad fates.

I want to say a little something that's long overdue the disrespect to women has got to be through. To all the mothers and the sisters and the wives and friends I wanna offer my love and respect till the end.

Men who love their mothers treat women wonderfully. And they have enormous respect for women.

The fact that religion plays such a part in how people vote troubles me troubles me as a minister's daughter. Because I always felt that the separation of church and state was what our forefathers and foremothers really fought for.

The real religion of the world comes from women much more than from men - from mothers most of all who carry the key of our souls in their bosoms.

I'm not a good father and they're not children any more the eldest is in his fifties. My relationship with their mothers broke down and because of what the law was they went with their mothers and were imbued with their mothers' morality in life and they were not my people any more.

So the experts think we could have an AIDS-free generation in Africa by 2015 even if the mothers are positive.

Like any other people like fathers mothers sons and daughters in every land when the issue of peace or war has been put squarely to the American people they have registered for peace.

We criticize mothers for closeness. We criticize fathers for distance. How many of us have expected less from our fathers and appreciated what they gave us more? How many of us always let them off the hook?

Fathers and mothers have lost the idea that the highest aspiration they might have for their children is for them to be wise... specialized competence and success are all that they can imagine.

No fathers or mothers think their own children ugly.

Mothers all want their sons to grow up to be president but they don't want them to become politicians in the process.

The way Hollywood portrays mothers - you're either all good and saint-like or you're all bad. And I think the real honesty of motherhood is not given a voice in movies. I miss that as an audience member.

I've played a lot of mothers in my movies.

Kids end up seeing my movies anyway but some of the mothers get mad at me so I figured I'd make one that I can't get yelled at for.

I don't think anybody cares about unwed mothers unless they're black or poor. The question is not morality the question is money. That's what we're upset about.