The people I grew up around who I really liked were quick on the draw. It always just wowed me. And my mum would make weird funny comments. I can see in myself her self-deprecating, hippie humour. I can't take myself too seriously.
My mum and my husband are from Irish backgrounds so we have a lot of potatoes. Chips, mashed, boiled, new potatoes, I love them all. Even the slightly wanky ones like Duchess potatoes that go up in a little spiral.
My mum always felt that women deserved as much as men, and should have as much power, so I suppose I opted to go into a very male-dominated arena to try and prove that.
My mum taught me to knit when I was a child, and I turn to it, for some weird reason, when I'm feeling depressed.
I'm amazed that things have panned out the way they have. I always say I'm so lucky, though my mum always says, 'You make your own luck.'
People have lots of misconceptions about me. My mum, who is half French and half Spanish, gets outraged when I'm called quintessentially English. I owe my looks to my mum-which was 90 percent of getting my first job. And, some people would argue, 90 percent of my entire career.
My dad was a militant atheist, or is a militant atheist. My mum was sort of bought up in a religious family because she was a Protestant from Ireland but wasn't especially religious.
I don't feel I'm as good a mum as my mum was.
In five years' time I'd like to be a mum. I want to settle down and have a family, definitely sooner rather than later. I'd like to have finished my second album too, maybe even my third. I'd like a sound that sticks around that other people are inspired by and that people know is me.
Mum loves me being famous! She is so excited and proud, as she had me so young and couldn't support me, so I am living her dream, it's sweeter for both of us. It's her 40th birthday soon and I'm going to buy her 40 presents.
I think I'm far too hopeful and trusting. That's something I got from my mum.
Often as a child you see someone with a learning disability or Down's Syndrome and my mum and dad were always very quick to explain exactly what was going on and to be in their own way inclusive and welcoming.
You do need parental guidance and I was in a great position with both my mum and dad. They split when I was a baby but even though I stayed with my mom they were both very much involved in my upbringing.
The Midwest isn't somewhere you mix with those from the performing arts. But my mum and dad would go off to Chicago every so often to see shows. They would bring back the albums and the movies, those little eight metres, and we would all watch. I think that was when I fell in love with acting.
I've tried and failed a lot. But I've also tried to be really clear about my brand. It is who I am. I'm a mum, I'm a wife, I'm 44 and from the Midwest.
I don't like kids that are pushed into things by stage mums, but when I can see they are having a good time, they're excited and enjoying the process, then I think it's wrong to discriminate.
When I was young and we got caught pinching apples, we got a smack from the local policeman. Today if that happened he would be sued. There is a tendency to punish the victim, not the criminal. If someone broke into my house or my mum's house, I worry that the burglar has more rights than me.
I look completely like my mum. She's very foreign, very Jewish.
We are still so close, David and I. We were at a party the other day at my mum's house and I was sitting on his lap. We're very affectionate. And I looked at him and thought after being married for 11 years! We were the only couple who were even near each other at that party. We're soul mates.
If I honour my needs first, I will be the best wife, the best mum, the best sister, the best friend. I have to come first, because then everyone benefits.
My mum and dad are pretty amazing chefs and they spent most of my childhood cooking really extravagant things for my sister and me.
Both my mum and dad were great readers, and we would go every Saturday morning to the library, and my sister and I had a library card when we could pass off something as a signature, and all of us would come with an armful of books.
Following 25 children for the TV series 'Child of Our Time' has been extraordinary. The BBC's original plan was to commemorate the new millennium. What better way than to film a number of expectant mums from across the U.K.? Coming from widely different backgrounds, all were due to give birth on January 1, 2000.
I couldn't live without my music, man. Or me mum.
My brother thinks it is very, very bad that I left Islam. My half-sister wants to convert me back; I want to convert her to Western values. My mum is terrified that when I die, and we all go to God, I will be burned.
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