My mother was a very natural woman. She never spoiled herself, never wore make-up, and wore modest jewellery, but she always had a few special items for when she wanted to feel like a lady. One of those special items – and I remember it because it seemed so elegant – was her Guerlain powder.

My mama never wore a pair of pants when I was growing up, and now that’s all she wears. It was so funny for me when I first started seeing Mama wear pants. It was like it wasn’t Mama. Now I’ve bought her many a pantsuit because she just lives in them.

Luxury must be comfortable, otherwise it is not luxury.

I knew I was a winner back in the late sixties. I knew I was destined for great things. People will say that kind of thinking is totally immodest. I agree. Modesty is not a word that applies to me in any way – I hope it never will.

My mother taught children to love to dance.

My mother was always fascinated with the fact that I could rhyme so much stuff.

Elegance is achieved when all that is superfluous has been discarded and the human being discovers simplicity and concentration: the simpler and more sober the posture, the more beautiful it will be.

My mother was a powerful influence. She made me toe the line. If I didn’t have a perfect report card, she showed her disappointment.

Some are made modest by great praise, others insolent.

My mother was an Earth Mother and the nicest person in the world.

The mother of a family should look upon her housekeeping and the planning of meals as a scientific occupation.

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

Although modesty is natural to man, it is not natural to children. Modesty only begins with the knowledge of evil.

The sexiest thing that a woman can do, wear, and say all fall under one word to me: subtlety. To be subtle in the things that she does and the things she says and the things she wears – I appreciate the details.

An author who speaks about their own books is almost as bad as a mother who speaks about her own children.

A church without women would be like the apostolic college without Mary. The Madonna is more important than the apostles, and the church herself is feminine, the spouse of Christ and a mother.

To be in any way a positive contribution, that’s all anybody wants to be. It’s all I’ve ever wanted to be. I wanted to be an artist, be a mother. You want to feel that in your life you’ve been of use, in whatever way that comes out.

Being a housewife and a mother is the biggest job in the world, but if it doesn’t interest you, don’t do it – I would have made a terrible mother.

I’ve always liked older ladies, ever since my mother would have B’nai B’rith at our house.

Just because I managed to do a little something, I don’t want anyone back home to think I got the big head.

When your mother asks, ‚Do you want a piece of advice?‘ it is a mere formality. It doesn’t matter if you answer yes or no. You’re going to get it anyway.

Life began with waking up and loving my mother’s face.

My mother was and will always remain my greatest hero.

If my mother knew I did this for a living, she’d kill me. She thinks I’m selling dope.

Sarcasm: the last refuge of modest and chaste-souled people when the privacy of their soul is coarsely and intrusively invaded.

Timidity makes a person modest. It makes him or her say, ‚I’m not worthy of being written up in the record of deeds in heaven or on earth.‘ Timidity keeps people from their good. They are afraid to say, ‚Yes, I deserve it.‘

Cooking certain dishes, like roast pork, reminds me of my mother.

I sang a song at my sister’s wedding. My mother forced me into that, too. But that one felt all right.

I never said I was the best in anything. I never said I’m an icon. The world decides all of that.

People don’t want to hear about me having leather walls or gold toilets.

When I write, the story is always uppermost in my mind, and I feel that everything must be sacrificed to it. All elegant passages, all the curious details, all the so-called beautiful writing – if they are not truly relevant to what I am trying to say, then they have to go.

My mother is not educated but keeps in touch with world events through news on TV.

Elegance does not consist in putting on a new dress.

I dream of a church that is a mother and shepherdess.

I’m big on what’s in good taste.

My mother would kill me if I posed nude! My mother raised me with certain standards.

My mother, I suppose, is still a main figure in my life because her life was so sad and unfair, and she so brave, but also because she was determined to make me into the Sunday-school-recitation little girl I was, from the age of seven or so, fighting not to be.

My mother had bought a sewing machine for me. When I went away to college, she gave me a sewing machine, a typewriter and a suitcase, and my mother made $17 a week working as a maid 12 hours a day, and she did that for me.

I thought it completely absurd to mention my name in the same breath as the presidency.

To me, the black black woman is our essential mother, the blacker she is the more us she is and to see the hatred that is turned on her is enough to make me despair, almost entirely, of our future as a people.

When I was a child I asked my mother what homosexuality was about and she said – and this was 100 years ago in Germany and she was very open-minded – ‚It’s like hair color. It’s nothing. Some people are blond and some people have dark hair. It’s not a subject.‘ This was a very healthy attitude.

With people of limited ability modesty is merely honesty. But with those who possess great talent it is hypocrisy.

Whenever I’m around some who is modest, I think, ‚Run like hell and all of fire.‘ You don’t want modesty, you want humility.

If every man loves his mother, he’s going to treat the ladies right, with love and respect.

Fashion is here to help make people look very important. If they have good taste and choose what suits them, I give them options on how they can do that. It’s always sexy, and it’s always with the same result: making women look fantastic.

No architecture is so haughty as that which is simple.

In search of my mother’s garden, I found my own.

My mother cooked like a scientist. She had a giant Chinese-style cleaver that she chopped with, and a cupboard full of spices.

I never get too high on my stardom or what I can do.

A superior man is modest in his speech, but exceeds in his actions.

My mother was a very wonderful woman. When she and my dad divorced, she moved to California and worked two jobs in the cannery at night and as a waitress during the day. But she saved enough money to establish a restaurant.

I don’t crave applause. I’m not one of those guys who comes alive on stage. I’m much more alive at home, I think.

I am who I am today because of my mother.

A man who says that no patriot should attack the war until it is over… is saying no good son should warn his mother of a cliff until she has fallen.

If a country is to be corruption free and become a nation of beautiful minds, I strongly feel there are three key societal members who can make a difference. They are the father, the mother and the teacher.

My mother was a public school teacher in Virginia, and we didn’t have any money, we just survived on happiness, on being a happy family.

I’m more of a realist when it comes to life, and I’d much rather my mother be in a spiritual place in Heaven than in a bed, sick, fighting for her life.

This is the hardest of all: to close the open hand out of love, and keep modest as a giver.

The father is always a Republican toward his son, and his mother’s always a Democrat.

If you saw Queen Elizabeth it would be amazing, she came from another planet. She was so attractive in what she was wearing.

The scab is a traitor to his God, his mother, and his class.