I think I'm funny because my family my siblings were funny.

When I was growing up my mother was always a friend to my siblings and me (in addition to being all the other things a mom is) and I was always grateful for that because I knew she was someone I could talk to and joke with and argue with and that nothing would ever harm that friendship.

Friendship improves happiness and abates misery by the doubling of our joy and the dividing of our grief.

No one can enjoy freedom without trembling.

I would say stay the hell away from the party scene. Anything you put in front of your goal and especially something like that whether it's too much gambling too much food too much cold beers on the weekend - anything that you put in front of the prize is going to end up getting in the way and hurting you in the end.

Food was always a big part of my life. My grandfather was one of 14 kids and his parents had a pasta factory so as a kid he and his siblings would sell pasta door to door. After he became a movie producer he opened up De Laurentiis Food Stores - one in Los Angeles and one in New York.

The independent girl is a person before whose wrath only the most rash dare stand and they it must be confessed with much fear and trembling.

There's a sort of sibling moratorium when you're establishing yourself as an adult. So much of your energy has to be focused on other things like work and kids. But when people become more settled siblings tend to regroup because now you're building a new extended family.

It's one of the worst-kept secrets of family life that all parents have a preferred son or daughter and the rules for acknowledging it are the same everywhere: The favored kids recognize their status and keep quiet about it - the better to preserve the good thing they've got going and to keep their siblings off their back.

I was lucky. My family is wonderful. And it's funny because most of my best friends come from very large families. So it always felt as if I had lots of siblings though in the end I had to leave them and go home. I kind of got the best of both worlds as a kid.

I'm a strange mixture of my mother's curiosity my father who grew up the son of the manse in a Presbyterian family who had a tremendous sense of duty and responsibility and my mother's father who was always in trouble with gambling debts.

I know it's a cliche but the whole family is just whacked. I mean we're all out of our minds. They're the funniest most eccentric bizarre people I've ever met my siblings.

I had a really wonderful upbringing. We were a tight family. It was wonderful to grow up with so many siblings. We were all just a year or two apart and we were always so supportive of each other. I learned everything from my older brother and sister and taught it to my younger sisters.

Italians come to ruin most generally in three ways women gambling and farming. My family chose the slowest one.

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.

Our failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq thus far has been deeply troubling and our intelligence-gathering process needs thorough and unbiased investigation.

You may count on Mexico's support since your commitment to the noblest causes of mankind and your vast experience are and will be invaluable in enabling us together to achieve a better world.

If people choose to live their life in a way that does not confront the more troubling aspects of their experience that's fine if it works for them. But it will probably make them uncomfortable if they come up against somebody like me. So they just shouldn't! They shouldn't read my work!

Writing a story or a novel is one way of discovering sequence in experience of stumbling upon cause and effect in the happenings of a writer's own life.

My own life has in some ways been a decades-long tour of the sibling experience. I have full sibs I have half-sibs and for a time I had step-sibs.

Motherhood has completely changed me. It's just about like the most completely humbling experience that I've ever had. I think that it puts you in your place because it really forces you to address the issues that you claim to believe in and if you can't stand up to those principles when you're raising a child forget it.

Address these environmental issues and you will address every issue known to man. And we keep dabbling in things that aren't really that important in the long term.

Population when unchecked goes on doubling itself every 25 years or increases in a geometrical ratio.

I couldn't have foreseen all the good things that have followed my mother's death. The renewed energy the surprising sweetness of grief. The tenderness I feel for strangers on walkers. The deeper love I have for my siblings and friends. The desire to play the mandolin. The gift of a visitation.