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

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

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

My own books drive themselves. I know roughly where a book is going to end, but essentially the story develops under my fingers. It’s just a matter of joining the dots.

Music helps me tell my story. That’s where I can really be heard. But there’s so much focus on the things that aren’t music.

There is no such thing as fun for the whole family.

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

You gotta make sure the listener is listening to you, so if you put it into a song, often times, if the song is striking enough, then you can really deliver the story most effectively while keeping the ear of the listener the whole time.

I remember coming to New York in 1974 to do a play here called ‚Equis.‘ And I remember the first morning getting up and walking around the streets, and I thought, ‚I’m home.‘ I felt really at peace here.

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.

And when I was young, my family was perfectly nice. I write a lot about it, as you noticed. But it was rather limited. I think, I don’t think anyone in my family would really feel I’d done them an injustice by saying that. We didn’t see many people. There were many books. It was as if I wanted to get away from home.

If someone lies, well, you had a choice to trust that person or not. I think the way my father raised me, well, he trusted everybody. And that worked for him.

The secret to the movie business, or any business, is to get a good education in a subject besides film – whether it’s history, psychology, economics, or architecture – so you have something to make a movie about. All the skill in the world isn’t going to help you unless you have something to say.

It’s about the stories. If I write 14 stories that I love, then the next step is to get the environment of music around it to best envelop the story, and all kinds of sonic goodness – sonic goodies.

Whatever the reasons may be, I was very much affected by events of the 1930s – the Spanish Civil War, for example, though I was barely literate.

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

I left Mainz after 18 years and thought, ‚Next time, I will work with a little less of my heart.‘ I said that because we all cried for a week. The city gave us a goodbye party, and it lasted a week.

I’m a fantasy writer, called a fantasy writer. But there’s very little, apart from one or two basic concepts in ‚I Shall Wear Midnight,‘ which are in fact fantasy. You have sticks that fly, but they’re practical broomsticks, with a bloody great strap that you can hold on to so you don’t fall off. And you try not to use them too often.

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 family wasn’t rich, so when it comes to money, I tend to think, ‚Err on the side of caution.‘

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.

Every hero becomes a bore at last.

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

I love my daddy. My daddy’s everything. I hope I can find a man that will treat me as good as my dad.

I like the way the stories of my relationships sound to music more than the way they look in print, in gossip columns or in me talking about them in interviews. I think it’s a better way of telling the stories.

I’m just a friendly person; that runs in my family.

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

Every man is a quotation from all his ancestors.

Do you not realize that the love the Father bestowed on the perfect Christ He now bestows on you?

A man always remembers his first love with special tenderness, but after that he begins to bunch them.

Give a little love to a child, and you get a great deal back.

My kids are the funniest two human beings there are.

Memories are the key not to the past, but to the future.

I have a family, loving aunts, and a good home. No, on the surface I seem to have everything except my one true friend. All I think about when I’m with friends is having a good time. I can’t bring myself to talk about anything but ordinary everyday things. We don’t seem to be able to get any closer, and that’s the problem.

If you are lucky enough to have lived in Paris as a young man, then wherever you go for the rest of your life it stays with you, for Paris is a moveable feast.

The people you choose to have around you make all the difference. My family and close friends keep me grounded. You have to have a mind of your own and a strong head on your shoulders. Cricket is the most important thing to me, so the rest of it pales in comparison.

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.

I’m a pretty decent writer. It comes easy to me. I don’t agonize over sentences. I write like I talk. I try to make them good books.

What life half gives a man, posterity gives entirely.

People think you have to go through something to write about it, and you absolutely do not. You can write about, like, a shoe. It’s a story.

I’d go to, like, six different schools in one year. We were on welfare, and my mom never ever worked.

If you can’t read, the only thing you can do is enjoy the pictures, not the whole story. Reading is the key to knowledge. Knowledge is the key to understanding. So read on, young man! Read on, young lady!

I like telling stories, and I tell stories that interest me. It would be boring to have to go to nothing but the best restaurants. That would be a misery to me.

All of my walls are covered with framed pictures of my friends.

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.

Imagine your family finally making it from nothing to something, and finally getting things going, and finally buying a beautiful house and taking care of your children – and the next day, it’s completely all gone. Zero. Boom. Flat broke. So that’s when I had to man up.

Memory is the way we keep telling ourselves our stories – and telling other people a somewhat different version of our stories.

But I think we’re also just talking about the literacy of the audience. The visual literacy of the audience. They’ve seen so many images now, especially here in the States. There’s so much to look at, to watch. So the visual storytelling literacy is harder to impress.

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

It was a privilege to pray with Governor Romney – for his family and our country.

People like Frank Zappa and Bryan Ferry knew we could pick and choose from the history of music, stick things together looking for friction and energy. They were more like playwrights; they invented characters and wrote a life around them.

A good novel tells us the truth about its hero; but a bad novel tells us the truth about its author.

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.

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.

Our inquiring friends and neighbors not of our faith can also catch the wave. We encourage them to keep all that is good and true in their lives. And we invite them to receive more, especially the glorious truth that through God’s eternal plan, families can be together forever.

My mom was a terrible parent of young children. And thank God – I thank God every time I think of it – I was sent to my paternal grandmother. Ah, but my mother was a great parent of a young adult.

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.

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

A mother defends herself with a heart filled with love before doing so with words. I wonder whether there is any love for the church in the hearts of those who pay so much attention to the scandals.

I never promise anything. I don’t promise anything to my mum. I don’t promise anything to the supporters.

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