And I come here as a daughter, raised on the South Side of Chicago – by a father who was a blue-collar city worker and a mother who stayed at home with my brother and me.

Marriage and family are ordained of God. The family is the most important social unit in time and in eternity. Under God’s great plan of happiness, families can be sealed in temples and be prepared to return to dwell in His holy presence forever. That is eternal life!

My family was a poor farming family, and we lived under absolute segregation.

My mother never cursed at home; my father never cursed at home. My father didn’t drink. Even though we were poor, we would say a blessing over the table. So that’s who I am.

With all the… success that I’ve been lucky enough to get? That doesn’t happen unless the home life is solid.

Whether I’m running on the beach without my shirt or whether I’m going out with my kids or going to church or going out to dinner – I don’t choose to insulate myself in engaging in real life. Hence, the public kind of almost knows me as much through my real life that they see through the rag mags.

I did stand-up for my grandparents every day when I was, like, eight.

I’ve been my mom’s kitchen helper since I was a little kid.

I imagine I will spend my days traveling from country to country to visit our children, who I expect will live around the world.

Cooking certain dishes, like roast pork, reminds me of my mother.

My mother was always fascinated with the fact that I could rhyme so much stuff.

I have a very good family. I’m very fortunate to have a very good family. I believe very strongly in the family. It’s one of the things we have in our platform, is to talk about it.

Family quarrels are bitter things. They don’t go according to any rules. They’re not like aches or wounds, they’re more like splits in the skin that won’t heal because there’s not enough material.

If every man loves his mother, he’s going to treat the ladies right, with love and respect.

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.

I was raised in a family where vulnerability was barely tolerated: no training wheels on our bicycles, no goggles in the pool, just get it done. And so I grew up not only with discomfort about my own vulnerability, I didn’t care for it in other people either.

When I was a kid, I never thought much about football. I thought about following in my family’s footsteps and going into professional wrestling.

Someday I want to have children and give them all the love I never had.

You know, my Grandpop Finnegan used to have an expression: he used to say, ‚Joey, the guy in Olyphant’s out of work, it’s an economic slowdown. When your brother-in-law’s out of work, it’s a recession. When you’re out of work, it’s a depression.‘

My other brother-in-law died. He was a karate expert, then joined the army. The first time he saluted, he killed himself.

I do have a lot of gays in my family now, but some will never come out.

I grew up in an environment where being polite was taken as a weakness. So I just fought everybody.

My family has very strong women. My mother never laughed at my dream of Africa, even though everyone else did because we didn’t have any money, because Africa was the ‚dark continent‘, and because I was a girl.

When I was a child I asked my mother what homosexuality was about and she said – and this was 100 years ago in Germany and she was very open-minded – ‚It’s like hair color. It’s nothing. Some people are blond and some people have dark hair. It’s not a subject.‘ This was a very healthy attitude.

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

My mother is a strong, wonderful woman. I could never be anything she didn’t want me to be.

Going home helps the content.

Every man is a quotation from all his ancestors.

My goal is just to be respected as a man when I walk down the street with my family. I don’t care what your job is, you’re not gonna talk down to me, you’re not gonna try to get a rise out of me. I’m a man first. And in establishing that, some interesting things have happened.

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

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.

This character feels so much like my brother. He has two children. He has a wife. He works with me. He chooses to stay in New Hampshire because he wants his kids to grow up in the school they started with. He doesn’t want them to lose friends. He is his family’s hero.

Within one’s own family, money is not the measure of things, unless the person is an absolute Scrooge. Only the most extreme kind of monster would put a price on everything.

Being a housewife and a mother is the biggest job in the world, but if it doesn’t interest you, don’t do it – I would have made a terrible mother.

Love begins at home, and it is not how much we do… but how much love we put in that action.

He that hath wife and children hath given hostages to fortune; for they are impediments to great enterprises, either of virtue or mischief.

I would love to continue in music, with writing… but I am not the kind of person who will hang around if I start to become irrelevant. If that happens, I will bow down gracefully, raise my kids, and have a garden. And I am going to let my hair go gray when I am older. I don’t need to be blonde when I’m 60!

When I was a youngster I lived with different families. I nearly always felt closer to the man of the house. Maybe because I always dreamed of having a father of my own.

My mother would kill me if I posed nude! My mother raised me with certain standards.

I think your values are always influenced by your family and your community.

I dream of a church that is a mother and shepherdess.

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.

My father had died, and very swiftly, too, of cancer of the esophagus. He was 79. I am 61. In whatever kind of a ‚race‘ life may be, I have very abruptly become a finalist.

In the little world in which children have their existence, whosoever brings them up, there is nothing so finely perceived and so finely felt, as injustice.

That’s what I do this for, to secure my family’s future. I don’t care about anything else. I’m able to spoil people, and that’s the best thing.

I listen to my mother, and that keeps me out of trouble. I’m a good son.

As apostles and prophets, we are concerned not only for our children and grandchildren but for yours as well – and for each of God’s children.

I go to sleep thinking about my kids being spoiled and I wake up thinking about it.

You know, my sister sings, my brother plays drums in my band. My whole family is a bunch of musicians.

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.

Call me Jonah. My parents did, or nearly did. They called me John.

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.

My upbringing was solid because of the people I had around me.

To bring a healthy child into this world, raise them right and watch them grow is the biggest miracle there is.

I always wanted to be a father and thought it would be great, but it just took the right woman and the right time to make it all happen.

I don’t know who my grandfather was; I am much more concerned to know what his grandson will be.

I’m attracted to women who are smart and funny and ambitious and have lives of their own and great families. Isn’t that what attracts anyone?

In search of my mother’s garden, I found my own.

I feel only my friends and family need to know what is happening in my personal life.

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.

We make the Sabbath a delight when we teach the gospel to our children.