I lived by the motto, ‘If you don’t flirt, you die.’ And flirt I did. I flirted with all women, be they actresses, producers, or 80-year-old grandmothers. I even flirted with those who were out of bounds, like the wives of some of my best friends, which especially revolts me.
I can’t tell you how many letters I get from grandmothers who say, ‘It’s the only thing I can talk to my 15-year-old grandson about.’ The Lakers are more than just a basketball team to this city. They’re part of this community.
My grandmother had a Ph.D in library science, so I grew up in a library, and I would appreciate those books and the smell of them and how they’d have these series, and it was cool to me. I always felt like, if I had an opportunity, I’d create an album that felt like a series.
My mother used to leave me and my brother in the house by ourselves. The authorities came and got us. It took a year or two to get us back with my grandmother.
My grandmother got me recordings of the ‘Goldberg Variations,’ in addition to the ‘Brandenburg Concertos,’ the Mozart string quartets and Beethoven’s ‘Seventh Symphony.’
I definitely come from a line of strong women. It’s not only like my mother and my grandmother, but my aunties too.
I’ve had a lot of really influential people in my life, like my grandmother M. J., who have helped me along the way. But there are so many of us girls in my family, and even though they’re all so open and honest, who I seek advice from depends on what aspect of life I’m dealing with.
My grandmother can never really teach me anything because she skips steps.
I knew I was outspoken when I was a kid because, whenever my parents had company coming over, they would pay me to leave. ‘Go see your grandmother. Get out of here.’ That was my first paying gig.
My great grandmother, Martha, was hired at 11 years old to be a worker to people.
My mother was an opera singer and my grandmother a concert pianist, and they only liked classical music. If I put on a pop record, they would tell me to turn it off, so I only listen to classical.
I wasn’t made to take orders. My grandmother used to tell me: ‘Laws are for idiots.’ She was right.
The word ‘good’ has many meanings. For example, if a man were to shoot his grandmother at a range of five hundred yards, I should call him a good shot, but not necessarily a good man.
I was a student of law as my grandmother wanted me to be a lawyer. But my passion has always been movies.
I was named after my Jewish grandfather who left Poland early in the 20th century. What I knew from an early age was that he had lived most of his life in England, his Jewish wife had died, and he married a non-Jewish woman who was my grandmother.
My grandmother played the piano, and I used to toddle over there and pick out little things that sounded good to me.
I’m from New York. My grandparents were settlers of Long Island City. When they came here, there was no bridge, and they had to hire a boat across the river. They had a farm, and my grandmother had to go once a week to Manhattan to buy provisions – very primitive.
I’ve had lots of kids come up and ask for my autograph, I’ve had a grandmother stop me and ask me if I know a good place to buy underwear.
Basically, I grew up watching Carter girls on stage, watching my grandmother, my mom and my aunts perform. They used to say, ‘Okay, Carter girls, you’re on!’
My parents traveled a lot, so my grandparents practically raised me. My grandmother and I really bonded in the kitchen. She’s this amazing southern cook, and I would always help her – whether it was cracking eggs or stirring the green beans. It takes me back there.
My grandmother valued her Southern roots, folk culture, and healing.
I think my mother and grandmother had style even though we’re humble Southern people.
My grandmother started my interest in secret doors, trying to find things she lost, and we found an old letter in a great bookcase with a round facade.
I definitely want to be a doting grandmother. I love babies. My colleagues will tell you if I’m in an arena and there’s a baby in my vicinity I’m holding that baby.
My grandmother is a huge Hawkeyes fan, so I, by proxy, have to be one. I’m more of a professional sports fan, and I’ve never been a huge college fan, but because of my grandmother, I’ve gotten into a lot of really good Hawkeye games. So, because I’m a good grandson, I’m a Hawkeye fan.
My family’s business was actually an amusement park in New Orleans. My grandfather had started that, and my grandmother was a dance maven in New Orleans. It was just the theatricality and the Mardi Gras and the pageantry that I fell in love with at an early age.
My Swedish grandmother was the daughter of a dairy farmer who lived near Hedemora. My Swedish grandfather worked as a clerk for the Swedish railways in the Stockholm station.
My grandmother – my mother’s mother – was a German Jewish refugee, an only child who came here from Berlin in 1936 at the age of 17.
Yarn, patterns, and needle sizes have come such a long way since your grandmother’s afghans. Creatively, there is just so much to get into, so much to play with. It’s an amazing way to turn inward and get off your phone.
As I grow older, I hope I can fully embody my grandmother’s remarkable peace.
Wigs have always been a part of my life and have become a staple accessory in my closet. I can remember being a little girl and hearing all the commotion in my house from my mom, aunts and grandmother when picking out their wigs for the day. It was such a good time for them and part of their everyday beauty routine.
I’m a grandmother.
I always wanted to play Joan of Arc. I’ve always wanted to do that. Now I’m thinking, ‘Maybe there’s a story in Joan of Arc’s mother!’ If I don’t hurry up, her grandmother!
My maternal grandmother was Cantonese, so I’m a quarter Chinese and half Irish and a quarter Scottish and raised by English parents living in Scotland.
My grandmother and mother were from Italy, so I was raised Catholic. That kind of just meant going to church on Easter and Christmas. I saw a radical transformation in my family when they started going to a Christian church. I watched them fall in love with God.
Since the time of the witch burnings, the grandmothers and the healers and the midwives have been systematically targeted. And burned at the stake for hundreds of years, decimating whole communities.
I always remember having a healthy respect for my grandmother.
My grandmother and both my parents worked in Bollywood.
My grandmother was a huge influence on me. She allowed me to be my flamboyant self as a kid. She babysat me; auditions came later – by later, I mean six years old. She sang and played piano, and I’d sit beside her. I don’t know how confident I am, but I think you need it to survive in this industry.
My grandmother could never have written a memoir, so ‘The Gravedigger’s Daughter’ is a homage to her life, and to the lives of other young women of her generation, which are so rarely articulated.
My father was Donald Trump, and my mother was Hillary Clinton, and my grandmother was Nancy Pelosi. And I was – I wanna say, Mike Pence, ’cause he’s the gayest one.
My grandmother was an actress too. In the thirties and forties she was under contract with Universal Studios. Crazy credits, lots of them. My dad was also under contract with Universal Studios. And my first film was shot on the same stage they both worked on at Universal.
I’ve an enormous respect for my mother who at the age of 39 raised three children, and I grew up with my grandmother in the household. And so it was a really strong household of women – my poor brother! It was great growing up with so many generations of women.
When I was very little, four or five, I did comic strip drawings, so my first novel had no words. I couldn’t write and thought adult handwriting was a mysterious scribble. When I was 14, my grandmother gave me a typewriter and I started writing in a different way.
There is a tradition in Southern cooking of recipes handed down for generations. And when I make my grandmother’s strawberry pie – she is gone on now – I feel her right with me.
I’m a man with many defects. I love. I sing. I dream. I was born in the poor countryside. I was raised in the countryside, planting corn and selling sweets made by my grandmother. My children, my two daughters are with me and I want a better world for my grandchildren, for your grandchildren.
I talk a lot about the men in my family because my mother died when I was little, and my grandmother died when my aunts were little, so we didn’t have those kinds of heads of household. But all the members of our household who were female were sort of living as equal and as wise as the male figures in our family.
Both of my grandmothers were diagnosed with breast cancer – one is a survivor and one passed away.
I had a very close relationship with my grandmother. She actually helped raise me.
My grandmother was a nanny for an Orthodox Jewish family, and she would come home and tell us about that.
One of my early childhood memories was my grandmother always having a bowl of Nestle chocolate bars at her house. My sister and I would argue over who could eat the chocolate bars. Looking back, I don’t know why we just didn’t share. We could have split them.
I think that I did inherit a very expressive face from my mother and my grandmother.
