My earliest memories of Gwyneth first singing is in bed when we would make up songs. The most I could do was harmonize, like, a third above, and at two years old, she'd be doing sixths. I said, 'Where in the world did that come from?' She'd just make up songs.

I've always had a middling kind of a career, not great highs and great lows.

I've been very lucky. I wanted to be an actress, but I didn't really have the drive to sell myself. Fortunately I had a terrific agent in New York who kept me going from job to job.

For a woman who's a widow and pretty much a loner, I can walk out, and I'm surrounded by NYU kids. The energy jumps off the sidewalks, and I never feel sad or bored.

When I was 11, I realised that I did not have to live the life my mother had: school, marriage, children, apartment, summer house.

My father's parents were Irish. Only a year before my father died, he and I went back to Ireland for a week to look at the old homestead.

As a child, I used to 'torture' other kids by making them be in my shows. I would sell tickets to neighbors and organize performances.

You cannot work and be at home with your child. But you want both.