The ideal death, I think, is what was the ideal Victorian death, you know, with your grandchildren around you, a bit of sobbing. And you say goodbye to your loved ones, making certain that one of them has been left behind to look after the shop.

The schools ain’t what they used to be and never was.

Thanksgiving dinners take eighteen hours to prepare. They are consumed in twelve minutes. Half-times take twelve minutes. This is not coincidence.

Music fills in for words a lot of the time when people don’t know what to say, and I think music can be more eloquent than words.

It’s not just a matter of whether you support Obama or Romney. It’s who they have coming with them. I always keep my powder dry, as they say in the military.

There are no problems we cannot solve together, and very few that we can solve by ourselves.

O! Let me not be mad, not mad, sweet heaven; keep me in temper; I would not be mad!

If you carefully consider what you want to be said of you in the funeral experience, you will find your definition of success.

My mother was and will always remain my greatest hero.

I hate to see anybody sink. I hate to see anybody lose their dream, lose their home, something like that.

One is never afraid of the unknown; one is afraid of the known coming to an end.

Fashion is inspired by youth and nostalgia and draws inspiration from the best of the past.

I don’t think I get that upset over things.

I got a chain letter by fax. It’s very simple. You just fax a dollar bill to everybody on the list.

War should only be declared by the authority of the people, whose toils and treasures are to support its burdens, instead of the government which is to reap its fruits.

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.

As a single withered tree, if set aflame, causes a whole forest to burn, so does a rascal son destroy a whole family.

First and foremost comes my family and my life with Brad. We have so much joy in raising our children and teaching them about the world that nothing really compares to that.

One friend in a lifetime is much, two are many, three are hardly possible. Friendship needs a certain parallelism of life, a community of thought, a rivalry of aim.

I’ve been around longer than most of my fans have been alive.

Good entrepreneurs are community builders, actively involved with their communities and dedicated to the community’s well being. If you’re dedicated to your community, it will be dedicated to you.

Let’s be very clear: Strong men – men who are truly role models – don’t need to put down women to make themselves feel powerful. People who are truly strong lift others up. People who are truly powerful bring others together.

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

We have come to a turning point in the road. If we turn to the right mayhap our children and our children’s children will go that way; but if we turn to the left, generations yet unborn will curse our names for having been unfaithful to God and to His Word.

I used to really love Fiend, but he stopped. He just stopped. Every time he had a project, every project – ‚There’s One In Every Family,‘ ‚Street Life‘ – I had to have them. And he just stopped. And that was disappointing, ‚cause that was my favorite rapper at one time.

Men who are unhappy, like men who sleep badly, are always proud of the fact.

Still and all, why bother? Here’s my answer. Many people need desperately to receive this message: I feel and think much as you do, care about many of the things you care about, although most people do not care about them. You are not alone.

Nothing could make me forget what the Reagan years had actually been like.

Effective communication is 20% what you know and 80% how you feel about what you know.

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.

When I think of the love I feel for each member of our family, I sense, to a slight degree, the love that our Heavenly Father bears for His children.

I live in Puerto Rico, my family lives in Puerto Rico, my friends. What happens in Puerto Rico matters to me.

Your feelings so are important to write down, to capture, and to remember because today you’re heartbroken, but tomorrow you’ll be in love again.

One of the most important decisions you’ll ever make is choosing the kind of universe you exist in: is it helpful and supportive or hostile and unsupportive? Your answer to this question will make all the difference in terms of how you live your life and what kind of Divine assistance you attract.

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

The greatest pleasures are only narrowly separated from disgust.

Friendship improves happiness and abates misery, by the doubling of our joy and the dividing of our grief.

In poverty and other misfortunes of life, true friends are a sure refuge. The young they keep out of mischief; to the old they are a comfort and aid in their weakness, and those in the prime of life they incite to noble deeds.

The land of my fathers. My fathers can have it.

All of our reasoning ends in surrender to feeling.

We do not so much need the help of our friends as the confidence of their help in need.

I have a terrifying long list of fears. Literally everything – diseases, spiders… and people getting tired of me.

I love everything about my job, except being away from the kids.

If you’ve heard this story before, don’t stop me, because I’d like to hear it again.

Love and doubt have never been on speaking terms.

My mother’s love has always been a sustaining force for our family, and one of my greatest joys is seeing her integrity, her compassion, her intelligence reflected in my daughters.

For me, already being part of a single parent household and knowing it was just me and my mom, you’d would wake up times and hope that the next day you’d be able to be alongside your mother because she was out trying to make sure that I was taken care of. But all I cared about was her being home.

Happiness is within the reach of everyone, rich or poor. Yet comparatively few people are happy. I believe the reason for this is that the majority don’t recognize happiness even when it is within their grasp.

We must respect the other fellow’s religion, but only in the sense and to the extent that we respect his theory that his wife is beautiful and his children smart.

Many people tell me that they don ‚t know what to feel when they finish one of my books because the story was dark, or complicated, or strange. But while they were reading it, they were inside my world and they were happy. That’s good.

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

I hate smiling. It makes me feel weak and powerless and small. I’ve always been like that; I don’t smile in any pictures.

Listen with your eyes for feelings.

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

I thought I would try to be gay for a while, but I’m just more sexually attracted to women. But I’m really glad that I found a few gay friends, because it totally saved me from becoming a monk or something.

Only God Himself fully appreciates the influence of a Christian mother in the molding of character in her children.

America is the student who defies the odds to become the first in a family to go to college – the citizen who defies the cynics and goes out there and votes – the young person who comes out of the shadows to demand the right to dream. That’s what America is about.

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

I would just say there is one misperception of our veterans, and that is they are somehow damaged goods. I don’t buy it.

And were an epitaph to be my story I’d have a short one ready for my own. I would have written of me on my stone: I had a lover’s quarrel with the world.

It is the advertiser who provides the paper for the subscriber. It is not to be disputed, that the publisher of a newspaper in this country, without a very exhaustive advertising support, would receive less reward for his labor than the humblest mechanic.