My friend has a baby. I’m recording all the noises he makes so later I can ask him what he meant.

A leader who confines his role to his people’s experience dooms himself to stagnation; a leader who outstrips his people’s experience runs the risk of not being understood.

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.

Every day we should hear at least one little song, read one good poem, see one exquisite picture, and, if possible, speak a few sensible words.

Writing and cookery are just two different means of communication.

After one has been in prison, it is the small things that one appreciates: being able to take a walk whenever one wants, going into a shop and buying a newspaper, speaking or choosing to remain silent. The simple act of being able to control one’s person.

If you reveal your secrets to the wind, you should not blame the wind for revealing them to the trees.

I meant what I said and I said what I meant.

I had to make a choice at one point in my life, of missing films or missing my children. It was a very easy decision to make because I missed my children so very much.

I let the dog out, or I let him in, and we talk some. I let him know I like him, and he lets me know he likes me.

I would like to see people more aware of where their food comes from. I would like to see small farmers empowered. I feed my daughter almost exclusively organic food.

People who have given us their complete confidence believe that they have a right to ours. The inference is false, a gift confers no rights.

Many people find the universe confusing – it’s not.

While I believed deeply in my husband’s vision for this country… and I was certain he would make an extraordinary President… like any mother, I was worried about what it would mean for our girls if he got that chance. How would we keep them grounded under the glare of the national spotlight?

Throughout my career, I fed off the fuel of people not being able to understand me.

Everybody is ignorant, only on different subjects.

Words are also actions, and actions are a kind of words.

I’m blessed to have such a tight-knit family that we can talk about anything. Whether we talk frequently or not, since we’re on separate ends of the country, there are a lot of moving parts, and we always stay tight and find that center ground that keeps us together.

He who speaks without modesty will find it difficult to make his words good.

I make friends faster and easier than journalists.

I say a murder is abstract. You pull the trigger and after that you do not understand anything that happens.

You can never really live anyone else’s life, not even your child’s. The influence you exert is through your own life, and what you’ve become yourself.

Half the world is composed of people who have something to say and can’t, and the other half who have nothing to say and keep on saying it.

I guess every single word I’ve ever said is going to be dissected now.

When you have a conflict, that means that there are truths that have to be addressed on each side of the conflict. And when you have a conflict, then it’s an educational process to try to resolve the conflict. And to resolve that, you have to get people on both sides of the conflict involved so that they can dialogue.

The world would be happier if men had the same capacity to be silent that they have to speak.

The happiest conversation is that of which nothing is distinctly remembered, but a general effect of pleasing impression.

Sometimes the hardest thing to do is to trust your team. It’s a lesson I’ve had to relearn quite a few times.

My experiences in life are getting bigger and better. The more stuff I do, the more stuff I talk about – having kids, traveling, going through relationship problems, dealing with things in my own family. All that stuff builds character.

When I am getting ready to reason with a man, I spend one-third of my time thinking about myself and what I am going to say and two-thirds about him and what he is going to say.

You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth.

Tell the children the truth.

The degree of one’s emotions varies inversely with one’s knowledge of the facts.

Because I am a mother, I am capable of being shocked: as I never was when I was not one.

I used to tell my husband that, if he could make me ‚understand‘ something, it would be clear to all the other people in the country.

I think that man has a fundamental obligation to extract from himself and from the earth all that it can give; and this obligation is all the more imperative that we are absolutely ignorant of what limits – they may still be very distant – God has imposed on our natural understanding and power.

Thinking: the talking of the soul with itself.

The highest form of ignorance is when you reject something you don’t know anything about.

It may happen sometimes that a long debate becomes the cause of a longer friendship. Commonly, those who dispute with one another at last agree.

The Internet is becoming the town square for the global village of tomorrow.

The joys of parents are secret, and so are their grieves and fears.

A boy carries out suggestions more wholeheartedly when he understands their aim.

When people get married young, you don’t really understand the true definition of marriage.

What I tell my kids is, ‚I’m preparing you for college and for life. So, having independence, knowing how to set your own boundaries, figuring out how to make that balance. We still have screen-time rules.‘

One has to secrete a jelly in which to slip quotations down people’s throats – and one always secretes too much jelly.

If you go back a few hundred years, what we take for granted today would seem like magic – being able to talk to people over long distances, to transmit images, flying, accessing vast amounts of data like an oracle. These are all things that would have been considered magic a few hundred years ago.

Campaign behavior for wives: Always be on time. Do as little talking as humanly possible. Lean back in the parade car so everybody can see the president.

It is good to express a thing twice right at the outset and so to give it a right foot and also a left one. Truth can surely stand on one leg, but with two it will be able to walk and get around.

The place of the father in the modern suburban family is a very small one, particularly if he plays golf.

It wasn’t so long ago that I was a working mom myself. And I know that sometimes, much as we all hate to admit it, it’s just easier to park the kids in front of the TV for a few hours, so we can pay the bills or do the laundry or just have some peace and quiet for a change.

Just as the humble, unassuming, assenting ‚O.K.‘ has deposed the more affirmative ‚Yes,‘ so the little cringe and hesitation and approximation of ‚like‘ are a help to young people who are struggling to negotiate the shoals and rapids of ethnic identity, the street, and general correctness.

I suppose for a very long time I’ve been trying to understand how it is that people might make sense out of their lives and make meaning and make their lives meaningful in the face of the trouble that life brings.

My biggest hobby is hanging out with my family and kids.

Stage actors are usually much more conscious of speaking up and making sure that everyone can hear in the back of the theatre; a film actor probably thinks of that a little less.

I hope that Facebook and other Internet technologies were able to help people, just like we hope that we help them communicate and organize and do whatever they want to every single day, but I don’t pretend that if Facebook didn’t exist, that this wouldn’t even be possible. Of course, it would have.

Ultimately this issue is on us. We’re the ones who make the decisions about what our kids eat.

You have to take risks. We will only understand the miracle of life fully when we allow the unexpected to happen.

But I was the most unashamed lone parent you were ever going to meet.

It is hardly an exaggeration to say that oral teachers and sign teachers found it difficult to sit down in the same room without quarreling, and there was intolerance upon both sides. To say ‚oral method‘ to a sign teacher was like waving a red flag in the face of a bull, and to say ‚sign language‘ to an oralist aroused the deepest resentment.

I’m dying to be a great dad one day, whenever that day comes.

Children make your life important.