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.

A man is more frank and sincere with his emotions than a woman. We girls, I’m afraid, have a tendency to hide our feelings.

A lot of preachers‘ kids are some of the most rebellious kids in the world. I never was like that.

The way I try to represent my family and coaches, I think all are characteristics the league aspires to portray. That’s just who I am.

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

My mom, she was a very, very soft woman. It was hard for her to yell or even curse. But when it came to fighting for her kids, she found a strength she didn’t always know she had.

I’ve never been able to understand why a Republican contributor is a ‚fat cat‘ and a Democratic contributor of the same amount of money is a ‚public-spirited philanthropist‘.

Those who know me know I’m passionate about lists, and top of my list of priorities is my family. My wife Joan and I do not consider our legacy to our children to be wealth or fame but the opportunity to pursue happiness by following their own path.

And so our mothers and grandmothers have, more often than not anonymously, handed on the creative spark, the seed of the flower they themselves never hoped to see – or like a sealed letter they could not plainly read.

With the amount of money I have, it’s difficult raising children the way I was raised.

Plain women know more about men than beautiful women do.

Too often the strong, silent man is silent only because he does not know what to say, and is reputed strong only because he has remained silent.

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

I’m an only child.

Regarding marriage, it – somehow, it didn’t happen. One fellow in such a big family not getting married is not an issue.

My problem was my inability to spend much time at home. I thought my family was secure, so I went running around everyplace else. I guess I had more of an effect on other people’s kids than I did my own.

Michelle and I don’t want anyone telling us who our family’s doctor should be – and no one should decide that for you either. Under our proposals, if you like your doctor, you keep your doctor. If you like your current insurance, you keep that insurance. Period, end of story.

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

My whole family have all been through a difficult time. My focus is my children, our children.

We had problems like all families but we had a lot of love. I was extremely loved. We always felt we had each other.

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!

I would as soon leave my son a curse as the almighty dollar.

I have Muslim members of my family. I have lived in Muslim countries.

I like everything. Boyish girls, girlish boys, the heavy and the skinny. Which is a problem when I’m walking down the street.

I’m just glad I was able to return to some of that innocence and beauty I had as a child when I started my own family, and my children brought me back some of that spirit.

I want to work; then, as my kids get older, I want to have adventures. I want to visit all their countries: learn and live inside all their cultures.

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

People have a negative impression of New York that I don’t think is quite fair.

My sisters are stronger and my brother’s bigger than me.

Thank God, I never was cheerful. I come from the happy stock of the Mathers, who, as you remember, passed sweet mornings reflecting on the goodness of God and the damnation of infants.

Going home helps the content.

Once you have six children, you’re committed.

The best thing about being a dad? Well, I think it’s just the thing that every man wants – to have a son and heir.

One of the things I realized is that if you do not take control over your time and your life, other people will gobble it up. If you don’t prioritize yourself, you constantly start falling lower and lower on your list, your kids fall lower and lower on your list.

We care for each other and care about our family, and we are both working towards the same goal.

I wish I had been home more when the children were growing up. I missed a lot.

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.

You see, at the end of the day, my most important title is still ‚mom-in-chief.‘ My daughters are still the heart of my heart and the center of my world.

Treat your kid like a darling for the first five years. For the next five years, scold them. By the time they turn sixteen, treat them like a friend. Your grown up children are your best friends.

Most women put off entertaining until the kids are grown.

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.

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.

We are the only real aristocracy in the world: the aristocracy of money.

I sing seriously to my mom on the phone. To put her to sleep, I have to sing ‚Maria‘ from West Side Story. When I hear her snoring, I hang up.

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

I’m a working-class person, working with class.

I never thought I’d have children; I never thought I’d be in love, I never thought I’d meet the right person. Having come from a broken home – you kind of accept that certain things feel like a fairy tale, and you just don’t look for them.

Probably because I’m from a middle class family, I have that nature in me that I don’t get too excited with big things.

We knew sports was important to us and our family, but there are priorities in life.Obviously, faith is foremost; how we did in school is important. If we didn’t handle that business then there were no privileges.

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

All of my brothers and sisters are very talented. They all sang all right.

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

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.

Bachelors know more about women than married men; if they didn’t they’d be married too.

More than anything else, I want the folks back at home to think right of me.

I’ve lost both parents in the last two years, so you pick up on that stuff. 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.

Be nice to your children. After all, they are going to choose your nursing home.

A family looks for ways to support and inspire one another.

If we are peaceful, if we are happy, we can smile, and everyone in our family, our entire society, will benefit from our peace.

I’ve always wanted a baby.