Children, I mean, think of your own childhood, how important the bedtime story was. How important these imaginary experiences were for you. They helped shape reality, and I think human beings wouldn’t be human without narrative fiction.

Without art, the crudeness of reality would make the world unbearable.

SEALs are human beings. We may all have the same haircuts, but we aren’t robots. Some SEALs are great people. Some are not great people. Some have done unspeakably terrible things. You’re dealing with different people, different dreams, different desires.

Everywhere I go, the kids call me ‚the book lady.‘ The older I get, the more appreciative I seem to be of the ‚book lady‘ title. It makes me feel more like a legitimate person, not just a singer or an entertainer. But it makes me feel like I’ve done something good with my life and with my success.

When I was a little girl, I always dreamed of being a star. I didn’t really know what all that meant. I didn’t know.

Art is not merely an imitation of the reality of nature, but in truth a metaphysical supplement to the reality of nature, placed alongside thereof for its conquest.

Emotion creates reality, reality demands action.

Well, everyone likes movies when they’re a little kid.

Like every parent, when you start your family, your life completely changes. And you completely live for someone else. I find that the most extraordinary thing. Your life is handed over to someone else. From that moment on, they come first in every choice you make. It’s the most wonderful thing.

Parents and teachers, learn to listen, then listen to learn from children.

When it comes to the pinch, human beings are heroic.

The reason children accept discipline from their parents is because they know their parents love them.

Progress is not an illusion, it happens, but it is slow and invariably disappointing.

We are more often frightened than hurt; and we suffer more from imagination than from reality.

We have lost contact with reality, the simplicity of life.

The greatest legacy one can pass on to one’s children and grandchildren is not money or other material things accumulated in one’s life, but rather a legacy of character and faith.

Part of me feels you can’t say you were truly in love if it didn’t last. If I end up getting married and having kids, that’s when I’ll know it’s real – because it lasted.

India has over 20 percent of the kids born in the world. And they move around a lot.

I am just a child who has never grown up. I still keep asking these ‚how‘ and ‚why‘ questions. Occasionally, I find an answer.

There can be no keener revelation of a society’s soul than the way in which it treats its children.

I’m from the generation that had the boys‘ door and the girls‘ door when you went to school, and you got in big trouble if you went in the wrong one.

I don’t take pictures when I’m with my kids, for the sake of my kids. It’s important when you’re as busy as I am that you give your kids your time when you’re with them, and nothing compromises that. I’ve been lucky enough to have fans that understand that.

What if everything is an illusion and nothing exists? In that case, I definitely overpaid for my carpet.

All of us have moments in our lives that test our courage. Taking children into a house with a white carpet is one of them.

When I was a kid, I never did funny things to get attention. I was never a funny person. I was never, like, ‚Oh, wow. I could say this some day on stage.‘

Children are a wonderful gift. They have an extraordinary capacity to see into the heart of things and to expose sham and humbug for what they are.

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.

No man should bring children into the world who is unwilling to persevere to the end in their nature and education.

The whole commerce between master and slave is a perpetual exercise of the most boisterous passions, the most unremitting despotism on the one part, and degrading submissions on the other. Our children see this, and learn to imitate it.

If I could have worked from the time I was born until I was 18 and never had to work again, I would have done it.

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

I didn’t have a father figure in the house.

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

I could speak three languages when I was six, and when I went to school, I only liked to read and sketch. At five, I could write and everything.

When I was 11, the whole world was closed to me. I just felt I was on the outside of the world.

If you’re doing a biography, you try to stay as accurate as possible to reality. But you really don’t know what was going on in the person’s mind. You just know what was going on in the minds of people around him.

I never played with anything like toys.

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.

I was bullied as a boy – lots of kids are, but hopefully most of us get on with our lives and grow up.

Sometimes, it’s just easier to say yes to that extra snack or dessert, because frankly, it is exhausting to keep saying no. It’s exhausting to plead with our kids to eat just one more bite of vegetables.

The more in harmony with yourself you are, the more joyful you are and the more faithful you are. Faith is not to disconnect you from reality – it connects you to reality.

The truth may be out there, but lies are inside your head.

We find delight in the beauty and happiness of children that makes the heart too big for the body.

The one thing I want to leave my children is an honorable name.

I was not raised with wealth or resources or any social standing to speak of.

You send a boy to school in order to make friends – the right sort.

A reader can never tell if it’s a real thimble or an imaginary thimble, because by the time you’re reading it, they’re the same. It’s a thimble. It’s in the book.

Fiction is based on reality unless you’re a fairytale artist.

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.

Familiarity breeds contempt – and children.

Memories are thoughts that arise. They’re not realities. Only when you believe that they are real, then they have the power over you. But when you realize it’s just another thought arising about the past, then you can have a spacious relationship with that thought. The thought no longer has you in its grip.

As a father, safety is always a top of mind issue for me.

Since God created the world, He also created reality.

My father… removed from Kentucky to… Indiana, in my eighth year… It was a wild region, with many bears and other wild animals still in the woods. There I grew up… Of course when I came of age, I did not know much. Still somehow, I could read, write, and cipher… but that was all.

When you’re around the kids, you feel like you act the most grown up just because you’re supposed to lead. I say things, like every other parent, that reminds you of your own parents. One thing I do know about being a parent, you understand why your father was in a bad mood a lot.

I’ve said this time and again: My greatest concern coming into the White House was making sure my girls came out whole and normal, and decent and kind, just like I would expect them to if we were living on the South Side of Chicago. And it takes work to keep White House life normal for the kids.

Perception often lags behind reality, and I can say from experience that the vast majority of public officials in Louisiana are much better than our reputation holds us to be.

It is far harder to kill a phantom than a reality.

I never smoked a cigarette until I was nine.

Reality simply consists of different points of view.

When we talk about mortality, we are talking about our children.