Our children await Christmas presents like politicians getting in election returns: there's the Uncle Fred precinct and the Aunt Ruth district still to come in.

Spending two years on my uncle's ranch in Montana as a young man gave me the wisdom and the thrust to do westerns.

I had two family members involved in World War I: two great-uncles. One of them is on a memorial in France. And the other was a trench runner who survived the war. The average life span of a trench runner was 36 hours but he survived the whole war.

If I could write a story that would do for the Indian one-hundredth part what 'Uncle Tom's Cabin' did for the Negro I would be thankful the rest of my life.

IT is mere coincidence that Cooper was born in the year which produced The Power of Sympathy and that when he died Uncle Tom's Cabin was passing through its serial stage and yet the limits of his life mark almost exactly the first great period of American fiction.

I think that everybody in the world whatever colour or creed has a jerk like JR in his or her family somewhere. Whether it is a father uncle cousin or brother everybody can identify with JR and that certainly had something to do with the success of 'Dallas.'

We all remember where we were and we all remember what we were doing. I had a brother in New York an uncle lots of friends in New York. It made me angry it made me sad what could I do.

It doesn't work if the bad guys kill his mother's uncle's friend's neighbor's pet dog. You've got to make the stakes high.

As parents grandparents uncles and aunts we need to start getting out into nature with the young people in our lives. Families play a key role in getting kids outside.

People often complain that music is too ambiguous that what they should think when they hear it is so unclear whereas everyone understands words. With me it is exactly the opposite and not only with regard to an entire speech but also with individual words.

When I read the pilot 'for Married with Children' it just reminded me of my Uncle Joe... just a self-deprecating kind of guy. He'd come home from work and the wife would maybe say 'I ran over the dog this morning in the driveway'. And he would say 'Fine what's for dinner?

It was my mom and I against the world. We lived in New York in this bohemian lifestyle where an extended group of artists and photographers were like my aunts and uncles.

Mom was a smoker. My grandfather was a smoker. My aunts were smokers. My uncles were smokers. I don't know any smokers now not even my mom.

In those days the late 1970s one of the leading politicians was a soon-to-be uncle by marriage of Arnold Schwarzenegger named Ted Kennedy.

By definition intelligence deals with the unclear the unknown the deliberately hidden. What the enemies of the United States hope to deny we work to reveal.

A handful of works in history have had a direct impact on social policy: one or two works of Dickens some of Zola 'Uncle Tom's Cabin' and in modern drama Larry Kramer's 'The Normal Heart.'

It is unclear exactly how many law enforcement agencies are currently using this capability but it is reasonable to say that while resource limitations used to discourage the government from tracking you without a good reason these constraints have largely disappeared.

I pray to be a good servant to God a father a husband a son a friend a brother an uncle a good neighbor a good leader to those who look up to me a good follower to those who are serving God and doing the right thing.

Men always talk about the most important things to perfect strangers. In the perfect stranger we perceive man himself the image of a God is not disguised by resemblances to an uncle or doubts of wisdom of a mustache.

My parents grandparents aunts and uncles were all funny and I felt that energy that delivery that timing that sarcasm. All that stuff seeped into my brain.

My uncle Sammy was an angry man. He had printed on his tombstone: What are you looking at?

It was my Uncle George who discovered that alcohol was a food well in advance of modern medical thought.

Uncle Brett had a definite vision that he was after I don't think having a famous father affected him much.

I felt no pressure that my grandfather was famous and my uncle was famous.