My parents were divorced by the time I was even conscious – like, I don’t remember them ever being together.

When I was nine years old, living on the south side of Chicago, my father was a minister and my mother used to scrub floors. I had seven brothers and four sisters. I told my mama, ‚One of these days I’m going to be big and strong and buy you a beautiful house.‘ That’s all I’ve ever wanted to do with my life, is to take care of my mother.

A lot of us grow up and we grow out of the literal interpretation that we get when we’re children, but we bear the scars all our life. Whether they’re scars of beauty or scars of ugliness, it’s pretty much in the eye of the beholder.

It took me 40 years to write my first book. When I was a child, I was encouraged to go to school. I was not encouraged to follow the career of a writer because my parents thought that I was going to starve to death.

I always thought money was something just to make me happy. But I’ve learned that I feel better being able to help my folks, ‚cause we never had nothing. So just to see them excited about my career is more of a blessing than me actually having it for myself.

My wife, a schoolteacher, very disciplined. If you think I’m tough, trust me, and wait till you see when the children are on the naughty step. It’s hilarious. So we decided that I’m going to work like a donkey and provide amazing support for the family.

Children make your life important.

To me, my house is always recreating what I lost in youth.

My folks ain’t graduated from high school or nothing like that, so we always had to struggle in the family – and I come from a big family.

We care for each other and care about our family, and we are both working towards the same goal.

I was probably tall as a child, but I just stopped growing.

I was the only kid who anybody I knew has ever seen actually walk into a lamppost with his eyes wide open. Everybody assumed that there must be something going on inside, because there sure as hell wasn’t anything going on on the outside!

All the songs I write are about human dynamics, whether it’s with girlfriends, boyfriends, or family.

I’m just a kid – I’ve got a lot of stuff to do yet.

All of my brothers and sisters are very talented. They all sang all right.

Perhaps the greatest social service that can be rendered by anybody to the country and to mankind is to bring up a family.

I refuse to feel guilty. I feel guilty about too much in my life but not about money. I went through periods when I had nothing, so somebody in my family has to get stinkin‘ wealthy.

When I was younger we had a grape arbor, and my mom would go out and pick grapes and make grape jam in the sink – boil it, put it in jars, and give it away as gifts.

However far back I go into my childhood, nothing seems to me more characteristic of, or more familiar in, my interior economy than the appetite or irresistible demand for some ‚Unique all-sufficing and necessary reality.‘

I grew up in a funny way.

Food is everything we are. It’s an extension of nationalist feeling, ethnic feeling, your personal history, your province, your region, your tribe, your grandma. It’s inseparable from those from the get-go.

We believed in our idea – a family park where parents and children could have fun- together.

My brother Bob doesn’t want to be in government – he promised Dad he’d go straight.

I had a really good childhood up until I was nine, then a classic case of divorce really affected me.

I was brought up as an only child, and we were very close. But when I was 14, we got evicted. We came home to a padlock, and I looked up at my mom and she was crying, and there was nothing to do.

‚Lives‘ is one of those books I should really have written when I was younger. It is the classic childhood, adolescence, breakthrough-into-maturity book. Every beginning writer has that material – and after that, you’re not sure what you can do.

I think a father is important for everyone. If you don’t have, then maybe not so much. In the world today, it’s possible that you grow up with only one parent in the family.

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

I remember my mother’s prayers and they have always followed me. They have clung to me all my life.

When I was 5, some financial things happened, and I moved seven times in a year. We moved from apartment to apartment, sometimes living with friends. My mom would always say, ‚Don’t get comfortable, because we may not be here long.‘

As a kid from Compton, you can get all the success in the world and still question your worth.

One of the greatest lessons of my own life was learning to turn the inner rampage of hatred and anger toward my own father for his reprehensible behavior and abandonment of his family into an inner reaction more closely aligned with God and God-realized love.

I’ve got incredible support from my wife and family and people around me. I’ve got great people around me who handle anything on the outside, business-wise, who help free me up to create in my job.

Mothers are fonder than fathers of their children because they are more certain they are their own.

I was a strange, loud little kid who could sit at the piano and kill a Beethoven piece.

Like all great travellers, I have seen more than I remember, and remember more than I have seen.

My personal telephone book is a book of the dead now. I’m so old. Almost all of my friends have died, and I don’t have the guts to take their names out of the book.

I’m so nervous. I’ve always been nervous, ever since I was a kid.

Growing up I didn’t watch movies.

‚Love Story‘ is actually about a guy that I almost dated. But when I introduced him to my family and my friends, they all said they didn’t like him. All of them!

Everybody is idealistic when you’re a kid.

Akron, Ohio, is my home. It will always be remembered. Akron, Ohio, is my life.

My fans saw me get engaged, saw me make that woman my wife, me having kids, me divorcing, me talking about divorce before the divorce, me talking about my kids‘ reaction to that divorce.

When I was a child, I was very poor and wanted everything. So when I got money, I began buying things.

My son has died of AIDS.

My family was mostly unemployed working class.

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

Clearly this is a tough economic time, and a lot of families are hurting. So when we talk to parents, we talk about small changes for kids and things that don’t cost extra money. Like adding water and eliminating sugary drinks and sodas. That’s going to save money right there. Or adding a few more vegetables.

My grandfather once ventured upon publishing a volume of hymns. I never heard anyone speak in their favour or argue that they ought to have been sung in the congregation. In that volume, he promised a second if the first should prove acceptable. We forgive him the first collection because he did not inflict another.

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

I was mischievous. I wasn’t bad. I stole food so we could eat. My mother didn’t know. I used to tell her some man gave me $10 to sweep out the yard. I was like Robin Hood. I took from the rich and gave to the poor. Me.

My dad was the town drunk. Most of the time that’s not so bad; but New York City?

Sometimes you can’t prioritise family and you feel guilty.

For me, it’s about the way I carry myself and the way I treat other people. My relationship and how I feel about God and what He does for me, is something deeply personal. It’s where I came from, my family, I was brought up in a religious household and that’s very important to me.

I was very worried about my mother, growing up – a lot. I do not want my children to be worried about me.

My kids are the funniest two human beings there are.

I come from a family of 12, so I kind of got a little lost as a child.

Life began with waking up and loving my mother’s face.

I’m seeing the world partially through the eyes of a kid. Not all the time. There’s no black and white to it. But sometimes I’m seeing it like I’m 4.

He who is overly attached to his family members experiences fear and sorrow, for the root of all grief is attachment. Thus one should discard attachment to be happy.

I started writing as a child. But I didn’t think of myself actually writing until I was in college. And I had gone to Africa as a sophomore or something – no, maybe junior – and wrote a book of poems. And that was my beginning. I published that book.