I was an only child, and Mother was always right with me all my life. I used to get very angry at her when I was growing up-it’s a natural thing.

Where I grew up – I grew up on the north side of Akron, lived in the projects. So those scared and lonely nights – that’s every night. You hear a lot of police sirens, you hear a lot of gunfire. Things that you don’t want your kids to hear growing up.

Whatever is begun in anger ends in shame.

Appearance is something absolute, but reality is not that way – everything is interdependent, not absolute. So that view is very helpful to maintain a peace of mind because the main destroyer of a peaceful mind is anger.

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.

When thou art above measure angry, bethink thee how momentary is man’s life.

There’s a schizoid streak within the family anyway so I dare say that I’m affected by that. The majority of the people in my family have been in some kind of mental institution, as for my brother he doesn’t want to leave. He likes it very much.

I want my kids to see me as Dad, for God’s sake, not a television personality.

My mother told me two things constantly. One was to be a lady and the other was to be independent, and the law was something most unusual for those times because for most girls growing up in the ’40s, the most important degree was not your B.A. but your M.R.S.

When I am angry I can pray well and preach well.

When I was a little kid we had a sand box. It was a quicksand box. I was an only child… eventually.

Like all best families, we have our share of eccentricities, of impetuous and wayward youngsters and of family disagreements.

When you get angry, your options narrow.

No person is important enough to make me angry.

For a long time I was scared I’d find out I was like my mother.

Illegitimacy is something we should talk about in terms of not having it.

I was raised in a family where vulnerability was barely tolerated: no training wheels on our bicycles, no goggles in the pool, just get it done. And so I grew up not only with discomfort about my own vulnerability, I didn’t care for it in other people either.

Mothers and daughters generally have fairly complex relationships, and ours was made much more so by Mother’s illness. She had Parkinson’s disease, which was not diagnosed for a long time… All that made me very self-protective, because for one thing, I didn’t want to get trapped.

When I was growing up in Pennsylvania, auditioning for Broadway was my dream.

I think daughters can change the perception of their fathers.

Whatever is making you so angry, it’s time for you to give it to God and get over it.

The most dangerous word in any human tongue is the word for brother. It’s inflammatory.

A family with the wrong members in control; that, perhaps, is as near as one can come to describing England in a phrase.

My father was a mean, controlling and manipulative person for most of his life. He was unpredictable and unstable.

You teach your daughters the diameters of the planets and wonder when you are done that they do not delight in your company.

Being a kid’s not easy. You’re transforming and becoming a human being. At some point, you have everyone taking care of you, and then, all of a sudden, you’re out in the world.

Now that I’m a parent, I understand why my father was in a bad mood a lot.

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.

Speak the truth, do not yield to anger; give, if thou art asked for little; by these three steps thou wilt go near the gods.

My father was a mean, controlling and manipulative person for most of his life. He was unpredictable and unstable. As a result, the atmosphere of our home was super-charged with fear because you never knew if what you did would make him mad or not.

I don’t blame the average seventeen-year-old punk-rock kid for calling me a sellout. I understand that. And maybe when they grow up a little bit, they’ll realize there’s more things to life than living out your rock & roll identity so righteously.

It’s very hard for our parents who see us enter a world that they can’t imagine.

A quick temper will make a fool of you soon enough.

When anger rises, think of the consequences.

When angry count to ten before you speak. If very angry, count to one hundred.

Consider, when you are enraged at any one, what you would probably think if he should die during the dispute.

Every day we have plenty of opportunities to get angry, stressed or offended. But what you’re doing when you indulge these negative emotions is giving something outside yourself power over your happiness. You can choose to not let little things upset you.

Generally speaking, if a human being never shows anger, then I think something’s wrong. He’s not right in the brain.

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.

You will not be punished for your anger, you will be punished by your anger.

I got a lot of support from my parents. That’s the one thing I always appreciated. They didn’t tell me I was being stupid; they told me I was being funny.

My own eight children all march to the beat of their inner music, and in some cases, it is definitely far away from what I hear. I’ve had to honor their instincts and their choices, and merely guided them out of harm’s way until they could be their own guides.

I’ve had no problem harnessing anger.

I praticed making faces in the mirror and it would drive my mother crazy. She used to scare me by saying that I was going to see the devil if I kept looking in the mirror. That fascinated me even more, of course.

To be intimate with a married man, when my own father cheated on my mother, is not something I could forgive. I could not look at myself in the morning if I did that. I wouldn’t be attracted to a man who would cheat on his wife.

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

Don’t get the impression that you arouse my anger. You see, one can only be angry with those he respects.

He that would be angry and sin not, must not be angry with anything but sin.

For the woman, the man is a means: the end is always the child.

I may neither choose who I would, nor refuse who I dislike; so is the will of a living daughter curbed by the will of a dead father.

I have to be in tune. All the time. I have to be in tune with my husband, where he is, how he’s feeling. I have to be in tune with where my family is.

How much more grievous are the consequences of anger than the causes of it.

We do not want the men of another color for our brothers-in-law, but we do want them for our brothers.

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

I’m just a kid – I’ve got a lot of stuff to do yet.

It’s much worse to read criticism about your son than yourself.

I always wanted to do what my brothers were doing. I always wanted to play the games they played and play rough and wear pants and go outside.

I don’t think your ability to fight has anything to do with how big you are. It’s to do with how much anger is in you.

In fact, you couldn’t give me anything to make me go back to being a teenager. Never. No, I hated it.

I was brought up as an only child, and we were very close. But when I was 14, we got evicted. We came home to a padlock, and I looked up at my mom and she was crying, and there was nothing to do.

Reacting in anger or annoyance will not advance one’s ability to persuade.