I like trying to get pregnant. I’m not so sure about childbirth.

My mother fought cancer for almost a decade and died at 56. She held out long enough to meet the first of her grandchildren and to hold them in her arms. But my other children will never have the chance to know her and experience how loving and gracious she was.

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

Having a child, that’s always been my biggest fear. I want a child and I fear a child.

I’ve always wanted a baby.

Someday I want to have children and give them all the love I never had.

People wonder aloud about whether I am an okay mother. That is obviously painful because it’s so important to me. It’s hard to hear that people think I’m not a capable mother and a good person, that they just think I’m nuts.

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 love our daughters more than anything in the world – more than life itself. And while that may not be the first thing that some folks want to hear from an Ivy-league-educated lawyer, it is truly who I am. So for me, being Mom-in-Chief is, and always will be, job number one.

My kids are coming up in a different time then me. Interracial couples are of the norm. With me, it’s about making sure my kids understand the importance of education and having opportunities that I didn’t. My goal as a parent is to make sure they don’t take what they have for granted.

I had my first baby at twenty-one.

If there’s a pregnancy rumor, people will find out it’s not true when you wind up not being pregnant, like nine months from now, and if there’s a house rumor, they’ll find out it’s not true when you are actively not ever spotted at that house.

I got the stern end of the stick. It was kind of that iron fist. I am who I am today because of my mother.

My momma didn’t clean up floors so I could be a thug… so I could wear my pants down.

Have you ever asked yourselves what you are going to do when you grow up? In all likelihood you will get married, and before you know where you are, you will be mothers and fathers; and you will then be tied to a job, or to the kitchen, in which you will gradually wither away. Is that all that your life is going to be?

It may be possible to gild pure gold, but who can make his mother more beautiful?

He didn’t come out of my belly, but my God, I’ve made his bones, because I’ve attended to every meal, and how he sleeps, and the fact that he swims like a fish because I took him to the ocean. I’m so proud of all those things. But he is my biggest pride.

I’ve learned a lot since I was a new mother. My approach to struggle and shame now is to talk to yourself like you’d talk to someone you love and reach out to tell your story.

I can encourage my daughter to love her body, but what really matters are the observations she makes about my relationship with my own body.

I had a C-section, and I found it fascinating. I didn’t find it a sacrifice, and I didn’t find it a painful experience. I found it a fascinating miracle of what a body can do.

Any other woman who has to go to work and pick up the kids and make dinner – that’s way harder than what I have to do.

My mother raised me with God. We were poor financially, but we were rich spiritually.

When a father puts in long hours at work, he’s praised for being dedicated and ambitious. But when a mother stays late at the office, she’s sometimes accused of being selfish, neglecting her kids.

All that I am, or hope to be, I owe to my angel mother.

There is a ‚sanctity‘ involved with bringing a child into this world: it is better than bombing one out of it.

At Columbia Law School, my professor of constitutional law and federal courts, Gerald Gunther, was determined to place me in a federal court clerkship, despite what was then viewed as a grave impediment: On graduation, I was the mother of a 4-year-old child.

While I believed deeply in my husband’s vision for this country… and I was certain he would make an extraordinary President… like any mother, I was worried about what it would mean for our girls if he got that chance. How would we keep them grounded under the glare of the national spotlight?

A mother takes twenty years to make a man of her boy, and another woman makes a fool of him in twenty minutes.

I’ve never lived my life in the opinion of others. I believe I’m a good person. I believe I’m a good mom. But that’s for my kids to decide, not for the world.

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?‘

The thing I want more than anything else? I want to have children. I used to feel for every child I had, I would adopt another.

He knows my limitations and where I’m a good wife and a good mom.

When I was four, my mother insisted I get out of the car and find my own way home. Although I got lost, I did find my way home. It taught me the value of independence at an early age.

One thing they never tell you about child raising is that for the rest of your life, at the drop of a hat, you are expected to know your child’s name and how old he or she is.

I want at least five kids. I want twins.

Most people don’t grow up. It’s too damn difficult. What happens is most people get older. That’s the truth of it. They honor their credit cards, they find parking spaces, they marry, they have the nerve to have children, but they don’t grow up.

Education commences at the mother’s knee, and every word spoken within hearsay of little children tends toward the formation of character.

I do not think that I am a natural born mother… If I ever wanted to mother anyone, it was my father.

No mother would ever willingly sacrifice her sons for territorial gain, for economic advantage, for ideology.

Yes, Mother. I can see you are flawed. You have not hidden it. That is your greatest gift to me.

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.

I always tried to do things by example, even though I was not a very good mother regarding routines and family life.

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.

These wretched babies don’t come until they are ready.

Because I am a mother, I am capable of being shocked: as I never was when I was not one.

Being a housewife and a mother is the biggest job in the world, but if it doesn’t interest you, don’t do it – I would have made a terrible mother.

My mother loved children – she would have given anything if I had been one.

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.

There’s nothing better than having a baby. I’ve always loved children. I used to work summers at the YMCA and be in charge of, like, 30 preschool kids. I knew that when I had a child, I’d be overwhelmed, and it’s true… I can’t tell you how much my attitude has changed since we’ve got Frances. Holding my baby is the best drug in the world.

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.

There’s people constantly asking you for something on set, so the multi-tasking of motherhood transfers very well to being a director. And I think you’re compassionate.

Who in their infinite wisdom decreed that Little League uniforms be white? Certainly not a mother.

I always wanted to be a father and thought it would be great, but it just took the right woman and the right time to make it all happen.

I think, at a child’s birth, if a mother could ask a fairy godmother to endow it with the most useful gift, that gift should be curiosity.

It’s a great thing about being pregnant – you don’t need excuses to pee or to eat.

I will say this: one of the things that is a pain when you’re expecting children is how much advice unsolicited people give you when you’re not asking for it.

I was raised by strong women, and that DNA is in my daughter and wife.

Without Cambodia, I may never have become a mother. Part of my heart is and will always be in this country. And part of this country is always with me: Maddox.

The influence of a mother upon the lives of her children cannot be measured. They know and absorb her example and attitudes when it comes to questions of honesty, temperance, kindness, and industry.

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

Never go to your high school reunion pregnant or they will think that is all you have done since you graduated.