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.

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

After momma gave birth to 12 of us kids, we put her up on a pedestal. It was mostly to keep Daddy away from her.

All parents are concerned about their children’s well-being. As a parent of three kids, I’m very concerned about their well-being.

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.

My greatest blessing has been the birth of my son. My next greatest blessing has been my ability to turn people into children of mine.

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.

It’s not proper for the government to intrude too thoroughly into the domain of the family. It’s inappropriate.

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.

Sisters are brittle things. God was penurious with me, which makes me shrewd with Him. One is a dainty sum! One bird, one cage, one flight; one song in those far woods, as yet suspected by faith only!

Within one’s own family, money is not the measure of things, unless the person is an absolute Scrooge. Only the most extreme kind of monster would put a price on everything.

It was times like these when I thought my father, who hated guns and had never been to any wars, was the bravest man who ever lived.

People change because of kids. They change how they eat. They change the way they think. They change the way they see one another.

My mom is American, so I was raised in her household in my formative years.

Your children will see what you’re all about by what you live rather than what you say.

My father was a mean, controlling and manipulative person for most of his life. He was unpredictable and unstable. As a result, the atmosphere of our home was super-charged with fear because you never knew if what you did would make him mad or not.

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.

I’ve got two daughters. 9 years old and 6 years old. I am going to teach them first of all about values and morals. But if they make a mistake, I don’t want them punished with a baby.

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

I’m not great at bedtime stories. Bedtime stories are supposed to put the kid to sleep. My kid gets riled up and then my wife has to come in and go, ‚All right! Get out of the room.‘

I may neither choose who I would, nor refuse who I dislike; so is the will of a living daughter curbed by the will of a dead father.

Mothers are fonder than fathers of their children because they are more certain they are their own.

All my momma’s people were very musical. My grandpa, who was the Pentecostal minister, he was a great musician. He played the fiddle, he played the piano.

My family is very good about visiting me, and other friends as well.

My mother, my grandmother, my uncles would play Ethiopian artists like Aster Aweke and Mulatu Astatke all the time in the house.

How sharper than a serpent’s tooth it is to have a thankless child!

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

My dad was very intelligent, had a very strong personality. I was amazed with my father.

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.

Your children are not your children. They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself. They came through you but not from you and though they are with you yet they belong not to you.

Family quarrels are bitter things. They don’t go according to any rules. They’re not like aches or wounds, they’re more like splits in the skin that won’t heal because there’s not enough material.

Every man needs slaves like he needs clean air. To rule is to breathe, is it not? And even the most disenfranchised get to breathe. The lowest on the social scale have their spouses or their children.

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.

I did have two dads; one was a socialist, and one was a capitalist. I really decided I would rather be a capitalist.

Heavenly Father loves every one of His children. After all, He is their Father.

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

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

Perhaps the greatest social service that can be rendered by anybody to the country and to mankind is to bring up a family.

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.

If the relationship of father to son could really be reduced to biology, the whole earth would blaze with the glory of fathers and sons.

My daughter doesn’t even get my humor. She’s like, ‚Um, no. I don’t get it, Dad. Mmm, no, not that one, Dad.‘

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.

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.

I believe that the greatest gift you can give your family and the world is a healthy you.

Basketball is my passion, I love it. But my family and friends mean everything to me. That’s what’s important. I need my phone so I can keep in contact with them at all times.

I was brought up as an only child, and we were very close. But when I was 14, we got evicted. We came home to a padlock, and I looked up at my mom and she was crying, and there was nothing to do.

I grew up in a musical family; the majority of my growing up was done in Hawaii. It’s what we do. You sing, you dance, you play ukulele and you drink.

The Sabbath provides a wonderful opportunity to strengthen family ties.

I don’t think that women need to smell interesting.

When I was young, an eccentric uncle decided to teach me how to lie. Not, he explained, because he wanted me to lie, but because he thought I should know how it’s done so I would recognise when I was being lied to.

Whenever something went wrong when I was young – if I had a pimple or if my hair broke – my mom would say, ‚Sister mine, I’m going to make you some soup.‘ And I really thought the soup would make my pimple go away or my hair stronger.

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

My father wasn’t around when I was a kid, and I used to always say, ‚Why me? Why don’t I have a father? Why isn’t he around? Why did he leave my mother?‘ But as I got older I looked deeper and thought, ‚I don’t know what my father was going through, but if he was around all the time, would I be who I am today?‘

When I was a youngster I lived with different families. I nearly always felt closer to the man of the house. Maybe because I always dreamed of having a father of my own.

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

I was baptized by my father when I was 4 years old.

The father is always a Republican toward his son, and his mother’s always a Democrat.

My mom’s one of 13 siblings, and they all got six kids, and till I was 13 everybody was in Compton.

That’s one of the biggest things. Never being home, always traveling, having different interests and focusing on different things, just the time aspect of going back home and seeing them, you don’t have that at all. It was a big sacrifice but, at the end of the day, it was worth it.

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.

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.