I didn’t have any children of my own.

I continue to care for President Obama and for his family. I think that in many ways they are very courageous people, and I honor that, because I know what it means to live as a black person in a racist America.

I believe everyone should have a good death. You know, with your grandchildren around you, a bit of sobbing. Because after all, tears are appropriate on a death bed. And you say goodbye to your loved ones, making certain that one of them has been left behind to look after the shop.

Neither of my parents went to church, but they did everything that you needed to do to be Christian. That’s something a Quaker would call an intimation of the divine.

Like all the best families, we have our share of eccentricities, of impetuous and wayward youngsters and of family disagreements.

If a man’s character is to be abused there’s nobody like a relative to do the business.

In my normal life I’m a very unadventurous person.

There’s no political point worth my son’s life.

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.

Upon the farm of the uncle with whom I lived, we did know of the mortgage as some dreadful damper on youthful hopes of things that could not be bought. I do have a vivid recollection that the major purpose of a farm was to produce a living right on the spot for the family.

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

I have tennis shoes with little rhinestones that I slip on if I exercise. But I always wear heels, even around the house. I’m such a short little thing, I can’t reach my kitchen cabinets.

My mother and my father have been married 50 years, and he’s just started to understand that something’s wrong with the system. He accepted the whole thing, you see. Yet this industrious kind of engagement didn’t bring him the success, according to American terms, that he wanted. I was probably affected by this very much. In fact, I know I was.

When I was growing up, my family was so poor we couldn’t afford to pay attention.

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

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

Until 1914 I loved to travel; I often went to Italy and once spent a few months in India. Since then I have almost entirely abandoned travelling, and I have not been outside of Switzerland for over ten years.

I have to tell you, my seven-year-old granddaughter said to my daughter, her mother, ‚So what’s the big deal about Grandma Maddy having been Secretary of State? Only girls are Secretaries of State.‘ Most of her lifetime, it’s true. But at the time it really was a big deal.

That’s the most terrible thing about being an author – standing there at your mother’s funeral, but you don’t switch the author off. So your own innermost thoughts are grist for the mill. Who was it said – one of the famous lady novelists – ‚unhappy is the family that contains an author‘?

John D. Rockefeller apparently became more of a tightwad the richer he got. I don’t know if it is true, but one story I read was about one of his sons having to wear his older sister’s clothes in order to save money.

I used to live with my grandmother. I used to wonder why the other kids in school went home with their mothers and fathers. I wanted to be the guy that got married. I wanted to be the guy with the children and the white picket fence. I never had that.

I never saw any of my dad’s stories. My mother said he had piles and piles of manuscripts.

In my heart, I’m just a kid from the council houses. I can remember the old cottage and my dad coming round with the tin bath. I’m not a rich man.

Train up a child in the way that he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it.

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

Life guided me to being a bodyguard, protecting people, then in the movies, so I’m happy with everything because basically all I ever wanted to do was be a good son and take care of my mother.

Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food.

I don’t even call them fans. I don’t like that. They’re literally just a part of my life; they’re a part of my family. I don’t think of them as on a lower level than me. I don’t think I’m anything but equal to all of them. So yeah, they’re basically all of my siblings.

The kids are a big part of my schedule.

If you have a family mission statement that clarifies what your purpose is, then you use that as the criterion by which you make the decisions.

Christmas morning, I’m going to open presents with my kids. I’m going to take pictures of them opening the presents. Then I’m going to come to the Staples Center and get ready to work.

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

I find the difference, for me, between having no money and having quite a bit is that the bills get bigger. And that’s it. The lifestyle doesn’t change.

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

I take my kids to school. And if I go to work, I go to work, and they visit me on set. I come home. I have dinner with my family. I have breakfast with my family. I have a very solid, very warm home.

I’m certainly well taken care of in terms of food and clothes.

Lectures should go from being like the family singing around the piano to high-quality concerts.

I hate to mention age, but I come from an era when we weren’t consumed by technology and television.

It is amazing how a new child can refocus one’s direction seconds after its birth.

I’m gonna go hard no matter what because I gotta feed my family, and I gotta feed myself.

I’m not a nerd, obviously. Do I look like one? I’m not someone who sits at home and doesn’t like to go out, doesn’t like to watch movies. I like to live my life.

If we could give every individual the right amount of nourishment and exercise, not too little and not too much, we would have found the safest way to health.

I imagine I will be less involved in film and be focused more on family and foreign affairs.

Increase of material comforts, it may be generally laid down, does not in any way whatsoever conduce to moral growth.

The problem is when that fun stuff becomes the habit. And I think that’s what’s happened in our culture. Fast food has become the everyday meal.

What life half gives a man, posterity gives entirely.

My next baby will be my new record.

An armchair Jungian would say the whole thing is about my own ongoing spiritual search. My interior life has always been one of trying to find a spiritual link, maybe because I’m from a family of separate religious philosophies: Protestant and Catholic.

I remember my mother’s prayers and they have always followed me. They have clung to me all my life.

I’ll never feel comfortable taking a strong drink, and I’ll never feel easy smoking a cigarette. I just don’t think those things are right for me.

When the human race neglects its weaker members, when the family neglects its weakest one – it’s the first blow in a suicidal movement. I see the neglect in cities around the country, in poor white children in West Virginia and Virginia and Kentucky – in the big cities, too, for that matter.

I’m very much a creature of habit.

My ultimate life dream project is my kids. My family.

I was raised a Catholic on both sides of the family. I went to a Catholic grade school and thought everybody in the country was Catholic, because that’s all I ever was associated with.

My children love Maleficent’s voice, so they always make me do it at home.

Family and friendships are two of the greatest facilitators of happiness.

I’m home a lot. Because I live in Ireland, we can live under the celebrity radar. I might go missing for a whole year.

Marriage is a wonderful institution, but who wants to live in an institution?

Returning to your family and where you came from, and your history… this is what makes you strong. It’s not looking out that’s going to do that – it’s looking in.

Everything I have, my career, my success, my family, I owe to America.

You don’t even really need a place. But you feel like you’re doing something. That is what coffee is. And that is one of the geniuses of the new coffee culture.