If I could be a third of the woman that my mom is ...

It's easy to get wrapped up in sharing everyday life with a partner. It's fun to get lost in love and romance. It's the best. But holding on to yourself while doing that is the most important thing.

I think if there's something one needs to change with oneself, it doesn't have to happen in the New Year. You can do that any time you please - not that it's not a good inspirational tactic for the people that it works for.

My dreams and aspirations when I was a child for as long as I can remember was to be an entertainer.

My inspiration was my mom. She's a great cook, and she still cooks, and we still banter back and forth about cooking. Growing up in a mostly Portuguese community, food was important and the family table was extremely important. At a very young age I understood that.

There are only two things a child will share willingly communicable diseases and its mother's age.

In Hollywood, you play a mom, and the next thing you know, you're on 'The Golden Girls.' They age you so fast.

When you are a mother, you are never really alone in your thoughts. A mother always has to think twice, once for herself and once for her child.

Aging is not lost youth but a new stage of opportunity and strength.

Youngsters of the age of two and three are endowed with extraordinary strength. They can lift a dog twice their own weight and dump him into the bathtub.

Brain power improves by brain use, just as our bodily strength grows with exercise. And there is no doubt that a large proportion of the female population, from school days to late middle age, now have very complicated lives indeed.

Old age is not a disease - it is strength and survivorship, triumph over all kinds of vicissitudes and disappointments, trials and illnesses.