I grew up upper-class. Private school. My dad had a Jaguar. We’re African-American, and we work together as a family, so people assume we’re like the Jacksons. But I didn’t have parents using me to get out of a bad situation.

We were never intimate mother and children while she was our mother – but… when she became our child, the affection came.

My mom and I have always been there for each other. We had some tough times, but she was always there for me.

My mother is from another time – the funniest person to her is Lucille Ball; that’s what she loves. A lot of times she tells me she doesn’t know what I’m talking about. I know if I wasn’t her son and she was flipping through the TV and saw me, she would just keep going.

Life began with waking up and loving my mother’s face.

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.

If you’re the parent, be a parent. You know what I mean? I’m a parent. I have daughters.

A businessman is the only man who is forever apologizing for his occupation.

Christmas is the perfect time to celebrate the love of God and family and to create memories that will last forever. Jesus is God’s perfect, indescribable gift. The amazing thing is that not only are we able to receive this gift, but we are able to share it with others on Christmas and every other day of the year.

Do you know what you call those who use towels and never wash them, eat meals and never do the dishes, sit in rooms they never clean, and are entertained till they drop? If you have just answered, ‚A house guest,‘ you’re wrong because I have just described my kids.

In the public eye, girls and women with strong perspectives are hated. If you’re a girl with an opinion, people just hate you. There are still people who are afraid of successful women, and that’s so lame.

I’m just wanting to make the proper breakfast and keep the house. That’s my passion. At the request of my kids, I’m taking cooking classes. As I go to sleep at night, I think, ‚Did I do a great job as a mom, or was that an average day?‘

God’s dream is that you and I and all of us will realize that we are family, that we are made for togetherness, for goodness, and for compassion.

There are plenty of people who are, I think, completely racist who love hip-hop.

A family with the wrong members in control; that, perhaps, is as near as one can come to describing England in a phrase.

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

For me, the opposite of scarcity is not abundance. It’s enough. I’m enough. My kids are enough.

I think a father is important for everyone. If you don’t have, then maybe not so much. In the world today, it’s possible that you grow up with only one parent in the family.

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

My mother was Catholic, my father was Protestant. There was always a debate going on at home – I think in those days we called them arguments – about who was right and who was wrong.

My mother was a powerful influence. She made me toe the line. If I didn’t have a perfect report card, she showed her disappointment.

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

Together, we can help make sure that every family that walks into a restaurant can make an easy, healthy choice.

My daughter has impressions that she does of me.

Some believe all that parents, tutors, and kindred believe. They take their principles by inheritance, and defend them as they would their estates, because they are born heirs to them.

Blacks, especially in America, have been raised with a slave mentality – they don’t feel that they have the right to speak as loud as possible.

Let parents bequeath to their children not riches, but the spirit of reverence.

My father considered a walk among the mountains as the equivalent of churchgoing.

Actors are one family over the entire world.

I just want my family to be safe. Because I am sometimes polarizing, I fear for their safety.

For me, it’s about the way I carry myself and the way I treat other people. My relationship and how I feel about God and what He does for me, is something deeply personal. It’s where I came from, my family, I was brought up in a religious household and that’s very important to me.

My grandmother took me to church on Sunday all day long, every Sunday into the night. Then Monday evening was the missionary meeting. Tuesday evening was usher board meeting. Wednesday evening was prayer meeting. Thursday evening was visit the sick. Friday evening was choir practice. I mean, and at all those gatherings, we sang.

A grandmother pretends she doesn’t know who you are on Halloween.

My father was a mean, controlling and manipulative person for most of his life. He was unpredictable and unstable.

In Germany, they all thought I was a bit mental, very emotional.

My work and my family are very important to me.

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

The first decade of the twentieth century was not a great time to be born black and poor and female in St. Louis, Missouri, but Vivian Baxter was born black and poor, to black and poor parents. Later she would grow up and be called beautiful. As a grown woman she would be known as the butter-colored lady with the blowback hair.

What’s so beautiful about Miami is that we support each other. We’re just one big family, not just the entertainers, just everyone in general.

My family was mostly unemployed working class.

As you get older, you have more responsibilities; you have more commitments, more events, kids, you’re married now. You still have all the things that you’ve had, plus you just keep adding.

I’m a bookworm. I know with my physical appearance that I don’t look like the typical reader. I’m in Barnes & Noble all the time, and you can look at people that look like they are supposed to be in there. I am in there, pants sagging, hat backwards.

I want to – more than anything – to create a moment that people will never forget. Not for me, but for themselves. That’s what I remember about great Super Bowl performances in the past, when you really get lost in the moment with your family.

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

There’s a schizoid streak within the family anyway so I dare say that I’m affected by that. The majority of the people in my family have been in some kind of mental institution, as for my brother he doesn’t want to leave. He likes it very much.

I wanted to be a skinny little ballerina but I was a voluptuous little Italian girl whose dad had meatballs on the table every night.

Historically, the family has played the primary role in educating children for life, with the school providing supplemental scaffolding to the family.

Country radio is much more like a family than any other group of people that I’ve met.

I am proud to have been born in Iowa. Through the eyes of a ten-year-old boy, it was a place of adventure and daily discoveries – the wonder of the growing crops, the excitements of the harvest, the journeys to the woods for nuts and hunting, the joys of snowy winters, the comfort of the family fireside, of good food and tender care.

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

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.

I believe that God’s dream is that we be successful in our careers, and that we be able to send our kids to college. I don’t mean that everyone is going to be rich, and I preach a lot on blooming where you’re planted. But I don’t have the mindset that money is a bad thing.

The African is my brother but he is my younger brother by several centuries.

The mother of a family should look upon her housekeeping and the planning of meals as a scientific occupation.

My brother Bob doesn’t want to be in government – he promised Dad he’d go straight.

People have so many hang-ups about how other people live their lives. People always want to keep you in a little box, or they need to label you and fix you in time and location.

I’ve never bought into any sort of hard and fast, this-box/that-box characterization. People are individuals. Yes, they may be expected to be a particular way. But that doesn’t mean they’re going to be that way.

I think about the milestones from my childhood and what it will be like to watch our kids go through them. Taking Riley to her first day of school was a whirlwind. I can’t imagine what middle school is going to be like, and high school, and graduation.

I like to talk about my obsession with french fries because I don’t want people to think that ‚Let’s Move‘ is about complete, utter deprivation. It’s about moderation and real-life changes and ideas that really work for families.

Every nation ridicules other nations, and all are right.

If you want something said, ask a man; if you want something done, ask a woman.