My parents both worked; I was a 'latchkey kid.' We were lower-middle class, and they did everything that they could to give me anything I wanted, within reason. We were not rich by any stretch of the imagination, but being an adopted kid, I think we had a different connotation. My parents tried extra hard, I think.

I never dreamed, when I received a small table for a Christmas present from my parents, I would have the career that I did or achieve so much.

In the U.K., my mother had been the breadwinner. I'd seen my parents side by side. In Saudi Arabia, my mother was basically rendered disabled. She was unable to drive, dependent on my dad for everything. The religious zealotry was so suffocating.

I wanted to make a movie once at Lake of the Woods, where my parents had a cabin, which I now have. We actually planned, we wrote a whole screenplay about a kind of Indian spiritual group that was at Lake of the Woods. We weren't calling it that but it was Lake of the Woods. We wrote a whole screenplay about it but we couldn't get funding for it.

Technologically we can deliver the ability of parents to be able to log into a school intranet, be able to see what homework has been set or look at lesson planning, whether the child is attending, see what the timetable is like, all of that is possible and there are some schools that are doing it already.

I played softball and basketball growing up. I really wanted to play football but both parents said no. I was mad for a second, then got over it. Now, just because I'm tall doesn't mean I can play basketball. I was waaaaay better at swinging a bat.

When I was 12, I forgot the keys to my parent's apartment. So I simply climbed up seven floors to get in.

Fits did not go over well in my house. There was a lot of discipline and obedience and you had to be very ladylike. Ladies didn't curse and I still don't curse in front of my parents.

Like so many aspiring writers who still have boxes of things they've written in their parents' houses, I filled notebooks with half-finished poems and stories and first paragraphs of novels that never got written.

My parents were quite strict; we couldn't just listen to whatever music we wanted. It was very much like they monitored what we listened to.

I think there's a knee-jerk reaction to things from parents.

The trouble is that, while my parents were great when they were apart, they were terrible together.

In skating or any amateur sport, as athletes we share something in common: the cost of training is quite a burden on our parents or on the athletes themselves trying to find a way to pay for their costs.

My parents are opposites who balance each other out.

Nothing you do for children is ever wasted. They seem not to notice us, hovering, averting our eyes, and they seldom offer thanks, but what we do for them is never wasted.

I was brought up in the same house I was born in, and I lived there until I left home as an adult. I also went to a Catholic school, which was full of Irish girls whose parents never split up, so everyone I knew had these big family set-ups.

Parents matter, buildings count, curriculum choices, materials, resources - all these things are important in a top-class education. But, in the end, it comes down to the teachers.

If you must know, my parents came from pretty hardscrabble backgrounds in the southern Midwest. I certainly didn't grow up poor, but I did spend my 20s and early 30s juggling temp jobs and choking on massive student-loan debt.

My parents, they call me Hilaria, my whole family call me Hilaria.

My parents had a difficult divorce.