Grandmother Quotations

I hope telling stories though 'Making a Difference' - as in my academic work and nonprofit work - will help me to live my grandmother's adage of 'Life is not about what happens to you, but about what you do with what happens to you.'

I went to college on a classical piano scholarship. My grandmother made me practice one full hour a day. Every day. Man. I thought all she wanted was for me not to have any fun. Next thing you know, you have a career in music. Now, not everybody's going to go on and be Mozart or Michael Jackson. But music makes you smarter.

I have my great grandmother's recipe for black beans, all the way from Cuba, and I know how to make those. I'm actually pretty good at it now. But my first time, the beans actually exploded in the pot, so I had black beans just dripping from the ceiling - which is actually a dream come true for most Cubans. It was a nightmare to clean.

My grandmother was, back when they called them 'stewardesses,' a flight attendant. I actually had a ball wearing that little uniform and making sure everything was under control.

I was literally the black sheep of the family, and there were definitely moments of discomfort while my grandmother was working through her racism.

The latest page I've been working is about the organization of the pantheon of the gods. Who's indebted to whom, how they are related, who screwed whose uncle or grandmother, all of that.

I think I'm a fan of people who were brave, my aunt, my grandmother, those are my heroes.

One of my most sentimental items is my grandmother's engagement ring that my mom gave me a few years ago. It's a Victorian-style setting that's closed in the back, so it doesn't sparkle the way diamonds do now. I wear it as a pendant.

My grandmothers are full of memories, smelling of soap and onions and wet clay, with veins rolling roughly over quick hands, they have many clean words to say, my grandmothers were strong.

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'm a very positive person. My grandmother taught me that happiness is both a skill and a decision, and you are responsible for the outcome.

Grandchildren are the dots that connect the lines from generation to generation.

I always remember having a healthy respect for my grandmother.

My deceased grandmother on my mom's side was a real fairy godmother, who lived to be 102 and who I always feel is looking after me.

My grandmother always told me you must keep to your old roads and stick to your original friends and just go through smooth, be careful and stay positive.

"Grandmother" doesn't mean that you have gray hair and you retire and stay home cooking cakes for your grandchildren.

My grandmother taught me to knit, and as I knit, my mind returns to my childhood.

My grandfather could barely read. My grandmother had a sixth-grade education. They were people who were industrious. They were frugal.

I don't sit in the corner waiting for death: death has to pursue me. I'm going strong. I hope to reach 100 and ask for an extension, just like my grandmother did.

Changing a diaper is a lot like getting a present from your grandmother - you're not sure what you've got but you're pretty sure you're not going to like it.

For years, my master had done his utmost to pollute my mind with foul images, and to destroy the pure principles inculcated by my grandmother, and the good mistress of my childhood

My grandmother always used to wear this English perfume called Tuberose and then she died and then I dated this girl who wore the same thing. Every time I hung out with her, I could only think of my recently deceased grandmother. So sometimes a signature scent can be good and sometimes it can be bad.

Today there are people trying to take away rights that our mothers, grandmothers and great-grandmothers fought for: our right to vote, our right to choose, affordable quality education, equal pay, access to health care. We the people can't let that happen.

I was raised by my grandmother on a farm, where we were really poor - we had dirt floors - but so did everybody else.

My grandmother is the person who inspires me the most.

My grandmother played the piano, and I used to toddle over there and pick out little things that sounded good to me.

I have loved corsets since I was small. When I was a child, my grandmother took me to an exhibition, and they had a corset on display. I loved the flesh color, the salmon satin, the lace.

So I started to relax and would work on my act eight hours a day, sitting at a desk writing at my grandmother's house, and I would put on Richard Pryor Live on Long Beach and would play it like a loop and think and write

My grandsons really love my apple cake, which is from my grandmother's recipe.

Nobody can do for little children what grandparents do. Grandparents sort of sprinkle stardust over the lives of little children.

My grandmother is this amazingly theatrical woman. She acted like a movie star, as far as looks and attitude, kind of like Susan Hayward.

My grandmother was the greatest cook in the world. She could just go in there, the whole kitchen would look like a tornado hit it and then she'd come out with the best food. Then she'd sit at the table and she wouldn't eat!

I know what it is like to be brought up with unconditional love. In my life that came from my grandmother.

And I have to tell you as a grandmother, I worry about the fact that my grandchildren are going to be paying for all the spending, including military spending, that has gone on and the tax cuts that have come through.

My grandmother worked on a fruit and vegetable market stall.

Before I liked to write, I liked to type. I remember visiting my grandmother Adele in Ponce Inlet, Florida, when I was three years old, and she had an IBM electric typewriter.

As a child, I was raised with my grandmother, alongside all my cousins, and the kitchen was always full.

My father died when I was young and I was raised by my grandmother, Emma Klonjlaleh Brown. We could afford to eat chicken just once a year, on Christmas.

With cult foods, there is an underlying assumption that the best cooking ideas came generations ago. Yet culinary innovation is nothing to be ashamed of. When a chef tells me he is cooking with his grandmother's recipe, I always wonder why. Did talent skip the past two generations?

My grandmother always said, 'when you receive a paycheck, you always have to put a certain amount to your savings, and 10 percent right away to charity.'

My grandmother was an unparalleled storyteller who gave me a preview of how life might turn out, and also fortified my empathy.

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.

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.

I remember an old Singer sewing machine at home that belonged to my grandmother. It had a pedal. My mom taught me how to use it when I was 12 years old. I used to find it so intriguing, how a flat piece of material could be made into an object that had so many uses.

My grandmother told stories; she was very good at that.

I think my grandmother saw my potential first. When I was young, I told her, 'I think I should get a job.' She said, 'No, just keep boxing.'

My grandmother was born in 1900, and she would regale me with tales I call 'Little House on the Prairie' tales, but they were tales of segregated and racist America growing up in Alabama and Mississippi, where she came from.

The happiest moments of my childhood were spent on my grandmother's front porch in Durham, N.C., or at her sister's farmhouse in Orange County, where chickens paraded outside the kitchen's screen door and hams were cured in the smokehouse.

I didn't grow up in a regular upbringing. I ended up at my grandmother's house past a certain age, so I took care of things myself. I moved out of home when I was 16.

Gerald Boyd was a classic specimen of the self-made man. Born poor, he worked and studied his way up out of poverty under the guidance of his widowed grandmother.

These days, it's often women in uniform - moms, wives, even grandmothers - who deploy and leave their families behind.

I was named for my grandmother. It's an evil-eye name, to protect you from bad things.

My whole family is spiritual. My grandmother, grand aunt, cousins, they're all preachers and pastors. Spirituality is a part of my family, from generations ago.

Being a grandmother is one of the least strange things in my life. It makes more sense than a lot of things... like photo shoots!

My grandmother valued even the smallest of things.

I am not ashamed of my grandparents for having been slaves. I am only ashamed of myself for having at one time being ashamed.

Just from being with my grandmother, my maturity escalated. And now I'm in tune to the needs of people. It was a large responsibility, taking care of a human being.

I'm a grandmother, and a mighty proud one.

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.

I'm one of these children who grew up at the knee of my grandmother and her elder sister, listening to very old people talk about their memories.

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.

My grandmother, grandfather, my mom - we've always been driven by laughter. It's what held us together. Thanksgivings, any kind of family get-together, we usually end up in tears.

I would say my grandmother would be like my personal god.

I am committed to helping Alzheimer's Society in any way I can. My family and I rely on the help of organisations like Alzheimer's Society to help us understand the disease and guide us in the care of my grandmother. It's been a privilege to meet so many people with dementia.

My grandmother was a huge influence on me and the fact that there was this very strong, rather formidable presence of women in my life has been an enormous value.

My grandmother, she say I shouldn't be playing. I should go to church. Fially, I say I'm going do this, I'm going do it. And she got where she didn't bother me about it.

During a visit to California, when a friend of my grandmother's told my parents that I must be deaf because I was not responding to sounds, my father was absolutely convinced that I was simply being stubborn.

A long time ago, when all the grandfathers and grandmothers of today were little boys and little girls or very small babies, or perhaps not even born, Pa and Ma and Mary and Laura and Baby Carrie left their little house in the Big Woods of Wisconsin.

I think it's important to recall... what you remember your grandmother making, where you're from and the foods you enjoyed as a child yourself, and pass that information off to your kids.

My dad was born in Chicago in 1908... his parents came from Russia. They settled in Chicago, where they lived in a little tiny grocery store with eight or nine children - in the backroom all together - and my grandmother got the idea to go into the movie business.

Until 45 I can play a woman in love. After 55 I can play grandmothers. But between those ten years, it is difficult for an actress.

My grandfather was Catholic; my grandmother, Jewish. Crossing over from Bavaria, as immigrants to the United States, the ship started to sink. My grandmother jumped overboard. My grandfather followed, to save this girl he had never met.

My relationship with my grandmother has gone from strength to strength. As a shy, younger man it could be harder to talk about weighty matters. It was: 'This is my grandmother who is the Queen, and these are serious historical subjects.'

My grandmother got her law degree from Syracuse University in roughly 1911 and later co-founded with her husband an investment banking firm on Wall Street known as Lebenthal & Co.

My view is that good community management is like having good municipal government: You should be able to have dissenting opinions and so on, freedom of speech, but your grandmother should also be able to walk down the street at night without having to worry about getting mugged.

My grandmother passed at 104. She sang and wrote songs until she passed.

I don't want to sound like an old grandmother but actually it's quite nice when you get up early and then, by the time it gets to 10am, you're quite perky and already quite switched on.

My grandmother and both my parents worked in Bollywood.

I've been a godmother loads of times, but being a grandmother is better than anything.

I don't feel like a grandmother. I don't.

Every generation revolts against its fathers and makes friends with its grandfathers.

I was really surprised when I was told that my grandmother did not come to see me till a month after my birth. I was born seven years after my only sister Chandranshu, and my birth was a big disappointment for her.

My worst hair experience was when I was trying to relax my hair and my grandmother did it. It went all straight and I looked like a black Bee Gee.

My grandmother though, began to prepare in her own neurotic - and I think psychotic - way to face racism. So she taught us to be racist, which is something I had to undo later when I got to Michigan, you know.

The simplest toy, one which even the youngest child can operate, is called a grandparent.

I used to listen to the soap operas with my grandmother.

I'd love to own a bakery at some point. My grandmother could help me run it - she is an amazing baker! I'd also love to do a cookbook.

I thank God, Jesus, and my Grandmother for being able to support myself and my family.

Contrary to the macho culture of Mexico, both my grandmothers were very brave young widows. I was always very close to these hard-working, intelligent women.

My grandmother was determined that everyone feel a sense of optimism and opportunity. Marc and I want to make sure we're doing that. This period of our lives is not just a tribute to her, it's inspired by her. And it's for when we have our own children — I want to help make sure we've got a world I want them to live in.

You don’t have to look far to taste some of the best food the world has to offer. I’d pit my grandmother against a 3-star Michelin chef any day.

I am a grandmother now, and that means age is creeping on, creeping on.

I had a messy signature as a child, and my grandmother said this suggested I had no regard for other people. She was right.

For any of us in this room today, let's start out by admitting we're lucky. We don't live in the world our mothers lived in, our grandmothers lived in, where career choices for women were so limited.

I bought a house in the Hollywood Hills and brought my grandmother from Harlem to live in it with me.

Those market researchers... are playing games with you and me and with this entire country. Their so-called samples of opinion are no more accurate or reliable than my grandmother's big toe was when it came to predicting the weather.

I have a role now that I think becomes me. I am a grandmother.

I just think I'm blessed. I love the Lord Jesus Christ. I have a great grandmother that passed away at 104 and two grandparents that passed away at 97 and 95 and they never worried about protein. They just enjoyed life and that's what I'm doing.

My grandmother lived with us for a short time while I was a child. Old people tend to be slightly more eccentric - they can behave the way they want.

A conservative is someone who makes no changes and consults his grandmother when in doubt.