My mom, she was a very, very soft woman. It was hard for her to yell or even curse. But when it came to fighting for her kids, she found a strength she didn’t always know she had.

Treat your kid like a darling for the first five years. For the next five years, scold them. By the time they turn sixteen, treat them like a friend. Your grown up children are your best friends.

I just want to make sure when I have kids, I can spend time with them. That’s the whole point.

It’s not because things are difficult that we dare not venture. It’s because we dare not venture that they are difficult.

The strongest influences in my life and my work are always whomever I love. Whomever I love and am with most of the time, or whomever I remember most vividly. I think that’s true of everyone, don’t you?

Barack knows the American Dream because he’s lived it, and he wants everyone in this country to have that same opportunity, no matter who we are or where we’re from or what we look like or who we love.

What happened in the missile crisis in October 1962 has been prettified to make it look as if acts of courage and thoughtfulness abounded. The truth is that the whole episode was almost insane.

We can’t form our children on our own concepts; we must take them and love them as God gives them to us.

Kisses are a better fate than wisdom.

I have a son, who is my heart. A wonderful young man, daring and loving and strong and kind.

I’ve never been pregnant, so I just feel God didn’t mean for me to have kids so that everybody else’s children could be mine.

I was adored once too.

Since it is difficult to join them together, it is safer to be feared than to be loved when one of the two must be lacking.

I want you to panic. I want you to feel the fear I feel every day. And then I want you to act.

At the age of 6, a teacher full of ambitions, who taught in the small public school of Biran, convinced my family that I should travel to Santiago de Cuba to accompany my older sister who would enter a highly prestigious convent school. Including me was a skill of that very teacher from the little school in Biran.

Fathers should be neither seen nor heard. That is the only proper basis for family life.

Solitary trees, if they grow at all, grow strong.

What greater thing is there for two human souls than to feel that they are joined – to strengthen each other – to be at one with each other in silent unspeakable memories.

The love we give away is the only love we keep.

I feel that there is nothing more truly artistic than to love people.

Never marry someone in hope that they’ll change later.

I never fall in love.

Just as courage is the danger of life, so is fear its safeguard.

I take a very practical view of raising children. I put a sign in each of their rooms: ‚Checkout Time is 18 years.‘

The unjustifiable severity of a parent is loaded with this aggravation, that those whom he injures are always in his sight.

March on. Do not tarry. To go forward is to move toward perfection. March on, and fear not the thorns, or the sharp stones on life’s path.

Do you really think it is weakness that yields to temptation? I tell you that there are terrible temptations which it requires strength, strength and courage to yield to.

I know for sure that loves saves me and that it is here to save us all.

My father wasn’t a cruel man. And I loved him. But he was a pretty tough character. His own father was even tougher – one of those Victorians, hard as iron – but my dad was tough enough.

Never lend your car to anyone to whom you have given birth.

Husbands are chiefly good as lovers when they are betraying their wives.

The way I try to represent my family and coaches, I think all are characteristics the league aspires to portray. That’s just who I am.

My mother loved children – she would have given anything if I had been one.

People like to hear the word ‚love.‘

Out of suffering have emerged the strongest souls; the most massive characters are seared with scars.

Courage is contagious. When a brave man takes a stand, the spines of others are often stiffened.

Education commences at the mother’s knee, and every word spoken within hearsay of little children tends toward the formation of character.

We need to reject any politics that targets people because of race or religion. This isn’t a matter of political correctness. It’s a matter of understanding what makes us strong. The world respects us not just for our arsenal; it respects us for our diversity and our openness and the way we respect every faith.

Michelle and I don’t want anyone telling us who our family’s doctor should be – and no one should decide that for you either. Under our proposals, if you like your doctor, you keep your doctor. If you like your current insurance, you keep that insurance. Period, end of story.

You will find as you grow older that courage is the rarest of all qualities to be found in public life.

These poems, with all their crudities, doubts, and confusions, are written for the love of Man and in praise of God, and I’d be a damn‘ fool if they weren’t.

Many a man’s strength is in opposition, and when he faileth, he grows out of use.

I don’t think there’s an option for me to fall in love slowly or at medium speed. I either do, or I don’t.

If you think you can slander a woman into loving you, or a man into voting for you, try it till you are satisfied.

My son has died of AIDS.

First and foremost, we need to be the adults we want our children to be. We should watch our own gossiping and anger. We should model the kindness we want to see.

There can be no deep disappointment where there is not deep love.

I soothe my conscience now with the thought that it is better for hard words to be on paper than that Mummy should carry them in her heart.

Phil Niekro and his brother were pitching against each other in Atlanta. Their parents were sitting right behind home plate. I saw their folks more that day than they did the whole weekend.

In all my work, in the movies I write, the lyrics, the poetry, the prose, the essays, I am saying that we may encounter many defeats – maybe it’s imperative that we encounter the defeats – but we are much stronger than we appear to be and maybe much better than we allow ourselves to be. Human beings are more alike than unalike.

Bob Dylan is like an alien on this earth, and I love him! I cried when I saw him play live because I was so close to him.

No one is so brave that he is not disturbed by something unexpected.

It is in the thirties that we want friends. In the forties we know they won’t save us any more than love did.

If you have only one smile in you give it to the people you love.

He that raises a large family does, indeed, while he lives to observe them, stand a broader mark for sorrow; but then he stands a broader mark for pleasure too.

Love is not consolation. It is light.

I’ve always seen first responders as unsung heroes and very special people because, when everyone else is running away from danger, they run into it.

You definitely want your kids to understand their heritage, but I don’t want my kids to just focus on being black. They are people. I don’t want them to judge other people or to be judged. I want them to be good people, so good people will treat them accordingly. I preach that to my kids and everything else falls into place.

I’m definitely gaining new fans, and that’s the key of any success… gain more love.

I was raised a Catholic on both sides of the family. I went to a Catholic grade school and thought everybody in the country was Catholic, because that’s all I ever was associated with.

Amour is the one human activity of any importance in which laughter and pleasure preponderate, if ever so slightly, over misery and pain.