I love being a dad. I just love 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.

But, you know, you can’t be a star at home.

I have a lot of other stuff to accomplish before I get to kids. Whenever the time is right, I’ll just know. If I had a girl, she’d probably be really rebellious. She would be like a bundle of karma. I would love to bring them up in Barbados.

My family wasn’t rich, so when it comes to money, I tend to think, ‚Err on the side of caution.‘

The heart is forever inexperienced.

My son is becoming me – just a silly, silly prankster guy.

I don’t know how to have a normal relationship because I try to act normal and love from a normal place and live a normal life, but there is sort of an abnormal magnifying glass, like telescope lens, on everything that happens.

Much that passes as idealism is disguised hatred or disguised love of power.

I love you when you bow in your mosque, kneel in your temple, pray in your church. For you and I are sons of one religion, and it is the spirit.

Love is not consolation. It is light.

The only way to take sorrow out of death is to take love out of life.

Of the love or hatred God has for the English, I know nothing, but I do know that they will all be thrown out of France, except those who die there.

Jesus never mistreated anyone just because they mistreated Him. He confronted them in a spirit of gentleness and then continued to love them.

Love is a trap. When it appears, we see only its light, not its shadows.

When I cook for my family on Christmas, I make feijoada, a South American dish of roasted and smoked meats like ham, pork, beef, lamb, and bacon – all served with black beans and rice. It’s festive but different.

I guess you could say I devoted myself so strongly to my music that for awhile I forgot about my family. But I only get one set of parents, and I think I forgot about that for a little while.

My mother was a public school teacher in Virginia, and we didn’t have any money, we just survived on happiness, on being a happy family.

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

No woman ever hates a man for being in love with her, but many a woman hate a man for being a friend to her.

My whole life and my whole career, even through my music, I tell people: let’s unify; let’s show more love.

My mom and I are very close.

It is not enough to say we must not wage war. It is necessary to love peace and sacrifice for it.

Tell the children the truth.

Feels good to try, but playing a father, I’m getting a little older. I see now that I’m taking it more serious and I do want that lifestyle.

I think if I keep working in the way that I am, from the heart and from passion and with love, well, the fruits of that will keep coming.

He that loves to be flattered is worthy o‘ the flatterer.

I love Mickey Mouse more than any woman I have ever known.

The best way to give advice to your children is to find out what they want and then advise them to do it.

If you were the President of the United States or the Queen of England – you couldn’t have a person who would be more protective than my mother was for me. Which meant really that I could dare to do all sorts of things.

That is what fame is, isn’t it? To get the world to fall in love with you.

To rule children by force is the technique of Satan, not of the Savior.

I have decided to stick with love. Hate is too great a burden to bear.

Love is when the other person’s happiness is more important than your own.

Life cannot be without relationship, but we have made it so agonizing and hideous by basing it on personal and possessive love. Can one love and yet not possess? You will find the true answer not in escape, ideals, beliefs but through the understanding of the causes of dependence and possessiveness.

Most women put off entertaining until the kids are grown.

I love being American, and I love family. I love having a family, and I feel so blessed, and I feel like God gave me exactly what I wanted, so now I have to do the right thing in God’s eyes also. Just follow what God wants me to do.

What’s really hard is that you could care a lot for someone and not want to live with him anymore.

If I ever had twins, I’d use one for parts.

I love those who do not know how to live for today.

Dreams are the guiding words of the soul. Why should I henceforth not love my dreams and not make their riddling images into objects of my daily consideration?

How much better it would be if all could be more aware of God’s providence and love and express that gratitude to Him.

I’m just glad I was able to return to some of that innocence and beauty I had as a child when I started my own family, and my children brought me back some of that spirit.

I don’t think my parents liked me. They put a live teddy bear in my crib.

Without Cambodia, I may never have become a mother. Part of my heart is and will always be in this country. And part of this country is always with me: Maddox.

The kids are old enough now – I just want to let them be kids. I don’t want to comment on them too much. They’re at an age where I just want to let them be kids.

People wonder aloud about whether I am an okay mother. That is obviously painful because it’s so important to me. It’s hard to hear that people think I’m not a capable mother and a good person, that they just think I’m nuts.

Blessed is the influence of one true, loving human soul on another.

Intimates are predestined.

People think, because we’re young, we aren’t complex, but that’s not true. We deal with life and love and broken hearts in the same way a woman a few years older might.

Once you have six children, you’re committed.

When you have kids, you see life through different eyes. You feel love more deeply and are maybe a little more compassionate. It’s inevitable that that would make its way into your songwriting.

Love is like a virus. It can happen to anybody at any time.

Man’s only true happiness is to live in hope of something to be won by him. Reverence something to be worshipped by him, and love something to be cherished by him, forever.

None of my kids want to be actors. They are actually very interested in being musicians. I think they like the process of film from the outside. Mad is interested in editing. Pax loves music and deejaying.

The moment you have in your heart this extraordinary thing called love and feel the depth, the delight, the ecstasy of it, you will discover that for you the world is transformed.

Some people would claim that things like love, joy and beauty belong to a different category from science and can’t be described in scientific terms, but I think they can now be explained by the theory of evolution.

I’ve never had a divorce, but I’ve seen so many of my friends, my sister, my family go through that stuff, so I try to write for the people that can’t write about it. I take on their sorrow, so I’m able to kind of express it, or their joy.

I love Brad in every state.

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

Be a force of love as often as you can and turn away negative thoughts whenever you feel them surface.