My dad was very intelligent, had a very strong personality. I was amazed with my father.

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.

My mom is American, so I was raised in her household in my formative years.

When I was growing up, I wanted to adopt, because I was aware there were kids that didn’t have parents.

Every family should have the right to spend their money, after tax, as they wish, and not as the government dictates. Let us extend choice, extend the will to choose and the chance to choose.

When I was younger, I was testing myself and questioning everything, but now it’s less about that and more about these are the years of my life with my family.

Marriage is a school itself. Also, having children. Becoming a father changed my whole life. It taught me as if by revelation.

I admire people who dare to take the language, English, and understand it and understand the melody.

My mom’s one of 13 siblings, and they all got six kids, and till I was 13 everybody was in Compton.

People who work for me know that family comes first. And I’m fortunate to have a family that is very supportive of the work I do, so I don’t have to live two separate lives.

My father probably thought the capital of the world was wherever he was at the time. It couldn’t possibly be anyplace else. Where he and his wife were in their own home, that, for them, was the capital of the world.

Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.

My father opened a restaurant. It’s so amazing… it’s so freaking delicious, but I’m telling you I gain five pounds every time I go in there.

You might say that Lyndon Johnson is a cross between a Baptist preacher and a cowboy.

My parents are my backbone. Still are. They’re the only group that will support you if you score zero or you score 40.

It is also true that one can write nothing readable unless one constantly struggles to efface one’s own personality. Good prose is like a windowpane.

I grew up around lots of men – my father, my brothers, my uncles – so I wasn’t intimidated by them.

I wasn’t allowed to go to movies when I was kid; my father was a minister. 101 Dalmatians and King of Kings, that was the extent of it.

My parents shared not only an improbable love, they shared an abiding faith in the possibilities of this nation. They would give me an African name, Barack, or blessed, believing that in a tolerant America your name is no barrier to success.

When I was young, an eccentric uncle decided to teach me how to lie. Not, he explained, because he wanted me to lie, but because he thought I should know how it’s done so I would recognise when I was being lied to.

I am deeply grateful to the citizens of Sarajevo and the Sarajevo Canton assembly for bestowing upon me this incredible honor of citizenship. I am so proud to now be a part of such an extraordinary part of the world and fellow citizen to the people I deeply love and admire.

The brain is wider than the sky.

I’m very free-spirited.

In our home there was always prayer – aloud, proud and unapologetic.

Quality is never an accident. It is always the result of intelligent effort.

I have ‚Parents‘ magazine in my home.

My mother, my grandmother, my uncles would play Ethiopian artists like Aster Aweke and Mulatu Astatke all the time in the house.

Making your dad happy is – especially for an Italian Catholic girl, I’ll tell you – it feels really good.

While the family is under attack throughout the world, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints proclaims, promotes, and protects the truth that the family is central to the Creator’s plan for the eternal destiny of His children.

My whole family have all been through a difficult time. My focus is my children, our children.

A happy family is but an earlier heaven.

I believe that the greatest gift you can give your family and the world is a healthy you.

Men admire the man who can organize their wishes and thoughts in stone and wood and steel and brass.

In hip-hop, there’s not a lot of love. There’s not a lot of love being spread. It’s always like ‚I’m stuntin‘ on you raps, or I’m better than you raps.‘ It’s not a lot of ‚Yo man, I idolize you raps.‘

Science has not yet taught us if madness is or is not the sublimity of the intelligence.

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.

Admiration for a quality or an art can be so strong that it deters us from striving to possess it.

I was offered a job on Wall Street by my uncle. But I wanted to get out. Make-it-on-my-own kinda thing.

If we take the generally accepted definition of bravery as a quality which knows no fear, I have never seen a brave man. All men are frightened. The more intelligent they are, the more they are frightened.

In real life, I’m a really smiley person. I smile when I talk and I laugh.

When I was growing up, there was nobody in my family – not even my mother – who I could look to and be like, ‚I know you’ve never said anything homophobic.‘ So, you know, you worry about people in the business who you’ve heard talk that way. Some of my heroes coming up talk recklessly like that.

Mum had done everything you need to educate a kid. She made me a kid who likes books and she told me about ‚Wind in the Willows‘ and read it and I thought this is weird, Rat, Mole, Toad and my first ever Bolshie thought – you know about ‚The Wind in the Willows.‘

I think Pat Robertson is a terrific fellow.

Going home helps the content.

Every man needs slaves like he needs clean air. To rule is to breathe, is it not? And even the most disenfranchised get to breathe. The lowest on the social scale have their spouses or their children.

One of the things I realized is that if you do not take control over your time and your life, other people will gobble it up. If you don’t prioritize yourself, you constantly start falling lower and lower on your list, your kids fall lower and lower on your list.

Like all the best families, we have our share of eccentricities, of impetuous and wayward youngsters and of family disagreements.

The fundamental cause of the trouble is that in the modern world the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt.

He has all of the virtues I dislike and none of the vices I admire.

My biological mother later found out that my mother had never graduated from college and that my father had never graduated from high school. She refused to sign the final adoption papers. She only relented a few months later when my parents promised that I would someday go to college.

Tina Turner is someone that I admire, because she made her strength feminine and sexy. Marilyn Monroe, because she was a curvy woman. I’m drawn to things that have the same kind of silhouettes as what she wore because our bodies are similar.

That summer after the draft was probably the most fun I’ve ever had, because all I had to do every day was wake up and go work out for four or five hours. I got to play some golf, which I love to do, too, and then got to hang out with my family.

I would as soon leave my son a curse as the almighty dollar.

Traditions are a common part of our lives. They can be good, and not all traditions are wrong, but sometimes they can take the joy out of life.

Man is the most intelligent of the animals – and the most silly.

I want to work; then, as my kids get older, I want to have adventures. I want to visit all their countries: learn and live inside all their cultures.

All my stepchildren carried the burden of my fame. Sometimes they would read terrible things about me, and I’d worry about whether it would hurt them. I would tell them: ‚Don’t hide these things from me. I’d rather you ask me these things straight out, and I’ll answer all your questions.‘

We had problems like all families but we had a lot of love. I was extremely loved. We always felt we had each other.

We are the most amazing creatures that this world has ever produced, but we seem to also have this herd mentality; we seem to be the most stupid, also.

Will minus intellect constitutes vulgarity.

What makes us human, I think, is an ability to ask questions, a consequence of our sophisticated spoken language.