I remember when my mother, Shyamala Harris, bought our first home. I was thirteen. She was so proud, and my sister and I were so excited. Millions of Americans know that feeling of walking through the front door of their own home for the first time – the feeling of reaching for opportunity and finding it.

In my day, there were no vet video games.

First and foremost comes my family and my life with Brad. We have so much joy in raising our children and teaching them about the world that nothing really compares to that.

All my stepchildren carried the burden of my fame. Sometimes they would read terrible things about me, and I’d worry about whether it would hurt them. I would tell them: ‚Don’t hide these things from me. I’d rather you ask me these things straight out, and I’ll answer all your questions.‘

Marriage is a school itself. Also, having children. Becoming a father changed my whole life. It taught me as if by revelation.

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

It’s very fun to be the hunter of the sounds. The hunter of the right energy. And it’s not really about if every sound is correct; it’s more the energy – if it hits you in some way, it doesn’t really matter to me if it’s not perfect. I’m still very excited while hunting for songs.

All the learnin‘ my father paid for was a bit o‘ birch at one end and an alphabet at the other.

I was a Chicago Bulls, Michael Jordan fan growing up.

One of the great attractions of patriotism – it fulfills our worst wishes. In the person of our nation we are able, vicariously, to bully and cheat. Bully and cheat, what’s more, with a feeling that we are profoundly virtuous.

All men are children, and of one family. The same tale sends them all to bed, and wakes them in the morning.

I take my kids to school. And if I go to work, I go to work, and they visit me on set. I come home. I have dinner with my family. I have breakfast with my family. I have a very solid, very warm home.

Thanksgiving dinners take eighteen hours to prepare. They are consumed in twelve minutes. Half-times take twelve minutes. This is not coincidence.

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 kindness that’s been shown to me, by doctors as well as my family and my friends, it’s really saved my life.

You can’t knock on opportunity’s door and not be ready.

I was born in the Ottawa General Hospital right after the Gray Cup Football Game in 1939. Six months later, I was backpacked into the Quebec bush. I grew up in and out of the bush, in and out of Ottawa, Sault Ste. Marie and Toronto.

I grew up where, when a door closed, a window didn’t open. The only thing I had was cracks. I’d do everything to get through those cracks – scratch, claw, bite, push, bleed. Now the opportunity is here. The door is wide open, and it’s as big as a garage.

I soothe my conscience now with the thought that it is better for hard words to be on paper than that Mummy should carry them in her heart.

All things considered, there’s nobody better for children than parents.

I still consider myself a little, fat kid from Hawaii.

A family shares hardships and a connected history.

You always want your people to be proud of what you have accomplished.

When I was nine years old, living on the south side of Chicago, my father was a minister and my mother used to scrub floors. I had seven brothers and four sisters. I told my mama, ‚One of these days I’m going to be big and strong and buy you a beautiful house.‘ That’s all I’ve ever wanted to do with my life, is to take care of my mother.

Part of me feels you can’t say you were truly in love if it didn’t last. If I end up getting married and having kids, that’s when I’ll know it’s real – because it lasted.

None are more taken in by flattery than the proud, who wish to be the first and are not.

I just received the following wire from my generous Daddy; Dear Jack, Don’t buy a single vote more than is necessary. I’ll be damned if I’m going to pay for a landslide.

Before I was born, my father told my mother, ‚If it’s a boy, he’s going to be a scientist.‘

My father had a dairy farm. He employed three black families and one white family, and I used to play with black children.

I had a Super Grover doll growing up. Super Grover was very clumsy, he wasn’t very good-looking. But in his own way he’d always save the day.

Every one of my regrets has produced a song I’m proud of.

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.

Making your dad happy is – especially for an Italian Catholic girl, I’ll tell you – it feels really good.

My work and my family are very important to me.

When I was a kid, I never thought much about football. I thought about following in my family’s footsteps and going into professional wrestling.

I was poor white trash, no glitter, no glamour, but I’m not ashamed of anything.

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

When I was a kid, I went to the store and asked the guy, Do you have any toy train schedules?

I have dual citizenship; it just so happens I live in America. I would like to go back to Wales. I’m obsessed with my childhood, and at least three times a week dream I am back there.

As a boy, because I was born and raised in Ohio, about 60 miles north of Dayton, the legends of the Wrights have been in my memories as long as I can remember.

I think that’s something that all mothers have to deal with, especially single mothers. We work, and we have to leave the kids behind. And I think that’s one of the reasons that we, not only as women but as families, we have to advocate for early childhood education for all of our children.

John D. Rockefeller apparently became more of a tightwad the richer he got. I don’t know if it is true, but one story I read was about one of his sons having to wear his older sister’s clothes in order to save money.

All that the future holds in store for each sacred child of God will be shaped by his or her parents, family, friends, and teachers. Thus, our faith now becomes part of our posterity’s faith later.

I think it speaks of all women having those few special things that make them feel feminine. And so when I was a little girl, I would associate Guerlain with that.

I say luck is when an opportunity comes along and you’re prepared for it.

For me, often, there’s such a cloud of melancholia about knowing I’m going to have to leave my daughter on her own. I don’t know what age that is going to be, thank God. It just doubles me up in grief.

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

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.

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.

My mama never wore a pair of pants when I was growing up, and now that’s all she wears. It was so funny for me when I first started seeing Mama wear pants. It was like it wasn’t Mama. Now I’ve bought her many a pantsuit because she just lives in them.

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.

Nothing is more expensive than a missed opportunity.

I’m gonna go hard no matter what because I gotta feed my family, and I gotta feed myself.

When I was maybe eight or nine years old, I first learned about the climate crisis in school. My teachers taught me about it and we saw films and pictures of plastic in the ocean and extreme weather events. Those pictures were just stuck in my head; I thought, there is no point in anything.

I have a full and satisfying life. My work and my family are 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.

By rendering the labor of one, the property of the other, they cherish pride, luxury, and vanity on one side; on the other, vice and servility, or hatred and revolt.

My mami and papi love my music. They’re always listening to the radio waiting for one of my songs to come on. And when it does, they turn up the volume – and turn it back down when it’s over.

Nothing has been purchased more dearly than the little bit of reason and sense of freedom which now constitutes our pride.

I thank Marc Jacobs so much for giving me the opportunity to design a shoe for Louis Vuitton, but the thing that broke my heart most was when they said, ‚You’re finished. The shoe’s finished.‘

I used to write random little stupid things when I was five, but then the first song I really wrote was one called ‚Fingers Crossed,‘ which is on SoundCloud.