I'm the only person in my family who can't sing. My grandmother was an opera singer and all of her kids were in church five days a week - or between church and vocal lessons at Carnegie Hall. But my mom had her first studio experience recording on my album. She's used to having to fill the room, so she had to adjust to the microphone and not sing opera.
I think the way we talk about cancer has really evolved. I remember the way my grandmother used to talk about it, like a death sentence, no-one would even mention the word.
My grandmother, she passed away at Christmas time. So now, I have this built in sadness, you know, every holiday. 'Cause I'm plagued with the thought of, you know, what she would have given me. What didn't I get to open this year?
It's the job of grandmothers to interfere.
My grandmother is basically blind, but she can make out the lighter parts, like my skin and hair. She says, 'I can see you, because you have no pants on.' So I'll continue to wear no pants so that my grandma can see me.
Your grandmother used to say that you were two souls separated in heaven. She mainly meant you were both trouble and deserved each other.
I had an amazing advantage: a grandmother [Polly Noonan, an influential confidante of the mayor of Albany] who loved politics. She taught me not to listen to negative press or people. I grew up knowing politics was rough-and-tumble.
As a 10-year-old girl, I would listen to my grandmother discuss issues, and she made a lasting impression on me.
I`ve never been a passive political supporter. My grandmother, Betty Kleitz , god bless her soul, was from Tuskegee, Alabama, took parts in the civil rights movement and after that became of course like a lot of blacks in the South a staunch Democrat.
"A closed mouth doesn't get fed." Oftentimes, we feel not worthy or we don't want to bother people. We forget to ask for help or what we need or would like. My grandmother used to say that quote to us as kids. It's kind of always stuck with me.
You need to understand this. We did not think we owned the land. The land was part of us. We didn't even know about owning the land. It is like talking about owning your grandmother - you can't own your grandmother. She just is your grandmother. Why would you talk about owning her?
My grandfather, Harry Ferguson, was a butcher in Hill of Beath; so even though my grandparents lived in some poverty, we got loads of beef. My grandmother, Meg, was a fine Scottish cook who did slow cooking.
I've got a lot of experience with anorexia - my grandmother and great-grandmother suffered from it, and I had a lot of friends at school who suffered from it. I know it's not something to be taken lightly and I don't.
I think I'm aware of entering my late 30s versus being in my late 20s, when the web was coming out as this new thing. It reminds me of how people used to tell me about my great-grandmother and how they used to gather around a radio listening to soap operas.
My grandmother took me to a lot of theater. I was exposed to performance quite a bit - everything from Broadway to off-Broadway and dance and music as well. I was very lucky that way. It was a very rich childhood.
I remember seeing Janet McTeer in A Doll's House. My grandmother took me and we had seats in the very back row, but her performance was so powerful - it was very accessible. I felt like I was much closer than I was.
I brought a lot of images of pieces I got from my grandmother, pieces I collected over time and then we met with a designer and we tried to morph all my inspirations into one story.
Stirlings of old had been so damned besotted with their newfound earldom that they couldn't think to put any other name on anything...It was a wonder he didn't drink Kilmartin Tea and sit on a Kilmartin-style chair. In fact, he probably would be doing just that if his grandmother had found a way to manage it without actually taking the family into trade.
No matter what you do, your grandmother thinks it's wonderful.
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.
After my parents passed away - in 2000 and 2003 - I felt I could take the time to think about the past and imagine what it would have been like to be my grandmother.
Failure isn't really an option because, as my grandmother used to say, "Nothing beats a failure but a try."
With all this talk of Going Green, Buying Green, Living Green, and Green being the new whatever, I've come to realize that, although we had no green, my grandmother was actually the 'greenest' person I've ever known.
My mom and my grandmother definitely were (Democrat supporters). It wasn't a sense that, "Well, we vote for Democrats no matter what," but it was sort of the sense that, "Democrats are typically the ones that are looking out for working people like us."
I wanted to create clothes for women in their 40s and 50s and 60s who have careers and are sexy and dont want to look like grandmothers.