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.

Is pride, the never-failing vice of fools.

Since childhood, I’ve been a clown. I’ve always liked being very funny or trying to make people laugh. It’s my original self.

I never went to school more than six months in my life, but I can say this: that among my earliest recollections, I remember how, when a mere child, I used to get irritated when anybody talked to me in a way I could not understand.

Not many people know this about me, but I’m a natural blonde. My hair went from light blonde naturally to a darker kind of blonde. My mother dyed my hair dark when I was a child, as I loved the look then. So I’m basically a natural blonde.

Pfft, I hate Christmas Day. It’s for children and families. Not for people like me.

A family shares hardships and a connected history.

What really motivates people at Facebook is building something that’s worthwhile, that they’re going to be proud to show to friends and family.

That’s what I do this for, to secure my family’s future. I don’t care about anything else. I’m able to spoil people, and that’s the best thing.

The opportunity for doing mischief is found a hundred times a day, and of doing good once in a year.

My mother, I suppose, is still a main figure in my life because her life was so sad and unfair, and she so brave, but also because she was determined to make me into the Sunday-school-recitation little girl I was, from the age of seven or so, fighting not to be.

We must open the doors of opportunity. But we must also equip our people to walk through those doors.

Whether I’m running on the beach without my shirt or whether I’m going out with my kids or going to church or going out to dinner – I don’t choose to insulate myself in engaging in real life. Hence, the public kind of almost knows me as much through my real life that they see through the rag mags.

For me, already being part of a single parent household and knowing it was just me and my mom, you’d would wake up times and hope that the next day you’d be able to be alongside your mother because she was out trying to make sure that I was taken care of. But all I cared about was her being home.

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.

If a great opportunity opens itself up, I would love to be involved… or star in a movie.

I think maybe people see bands and musicians as some sort of superhero unrealistic sport that happens in another dimension where it’s not real people and not real emotions. So, I grew up listening to Beatles records on my floor. That’s how I learned how to play guitar. If it weren’t for them, I wouldn’t be a musician.

Every wall is a door.

If you were the President of the United States or the Queen of England – you couldn’t have a person who would be more protective than my mother was for me. Which meant really that I could dare to do all sorts of things.

I guess you could say I devoted myself so strongly to my music that for awhile I forgot about my family. But I only get one set of parents, and I think I forgot about that for a little while.

When I’m inspired, I get excited because I can’t wait to see what I’ll come up with next.

We make the Sabbath a delight when we teach the gospel to our children.

My father, who was jailed for stealing on more than one occasion, just abandoned his fatherly responsibilities and disappeared. I grew up working from the time I was nine years of age. Money was a big issue everywhere I lived.

I know when I grew up, it was, if it was daylight outside, get outside. Well, now, with the technological age of computers and everything, everyone’s inside virtually going everywhere they want to go, virtually having relationships, virtually traveling across the neighborhood, virtually going to that island.

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.

Everything negative – pressure, challenges – is all an opportunity for me to rise.

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?‘

My experiences in life are getting bigger and better. The more stuff I do, the more stuff I talk about – having kids, traveling, going through relationship problems, dealing with things in my own family. All that stuff builds character.

I would like to do a duet with Taylor Hanson, because I have loved Hanson since I was 8.

It is totally different making films in the East than in the West. In the East, I make my own Jackie Chan films, and it’s like my family. Sometimes I pick up the camera because I choreograph all the fighting scenes, even when I’m not fighting. I don’t have my own chair. I just sit on the set with everybody.

There are only two lasting bequests we can hope to give our children. One of these is roots, the other, wings.

Sometimes you can’t prioritise family and you feel guilty.

We have the opportunity to move not only toward the rich society and the powerful society, but upward to the Great Society.

I felt like, for so many years – and I still even feel it – as a girl, you can’t really expect to go on stage and dress like a boy and jump around and scream with the audience and mosh and stuff, and every time that happens, I feel really proud.

My father considered a walk among the mountains as the equivalent of churchgoing.

What I remember as a child is that other kids didn’t care about suffering. I always did.

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

I never went to rock concerts when I was a kid. I didn’t see any rock & roll bands.

With all the… success that I’ve been lucky enough to get? That doesn’t happen unless the home life is solid.

I cannot remember a moment in my life when I have not felt the love of my family. We were a family that would have killed for each other – and we still are.

Upon the farm of the uncle with whom I lived, we did know of the mortgage as some dreadful damper on youthful hopes of things that could not be bought. I do have a vivid recollection that the major purpose of a farm was to produce a living right on the spot for the family.

I look at other people’s lives, and some people feel like they’re too old to play with toys. But I still go through the toy section at the store, ‚cause there were toys that I wanted when I was little that I couldn’t have. So I still get them.

My parents were divorced by the time I was even conscious – like, I don’t remember them ever being together.

To lose one parent may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose both looks like carelessness.

I used to live with my grandmother. I used to wonder why the other kids in school went home with their mothers and fathers. I wanted to be the guy that got married. I wanted to be the guy with the children and the white picket fence. I never had that.

We are America, second to none, and we own the finish line. Don’t forget it.

My family has very strong women. My mother never laughed at my dream of Africa, even though everyone else did because we didn’t have any money, because Africa was the ‚dark continent‘, and because I was a girl.

Life began with waking up and loving my mother’s face.

Nothing is ever done beautifully which is done in rivalship: or nobly, which is done in pride.

Our constitution is a ray of hope: H for harmony, O for Opportunity, P for people’s participation and E for equality.

It may easily come to pass that a vain man may become proud and imagine himself pleasing to all when he is in reality a universal nuisance.

Apple has given me a platform to spread music. They’re giving us Latinos a chance to shine.

Every right implies a responsibility; Every opportunity, an obligation, Every possession, a duty.

Generosity is giving more than you can, and pride is taking less than you need.

But, you know, you can’t be a star at home.

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.

When a person starts to talk about their dreams, it’s as if something bubbles up from within. Their eyes brighten, their face glows, and you can feel the excitement in their words.

When I look back on what I did for the Left, I’m in a small way quite proud of some of it – I only wish I’d done more.

I would love to continue in music, with writing… but I am not the kind of person who will hang around if I start to become irrelevant. If that happens, I will bow down gracefully, raise my kids, and have a garden. And I am going to let my hair go gray when I am older. I don’t need to be blonde when I’m 60!

Family home evening is more for the purpose of teaching values and gospel principles, displaying talents and enjoying different kinds of family fun and activities.

The things that transfixed you as a child, that you found most exciting was not a passing fancy, but a message about what you’re supposed to do.