I was baptized by my father when I was 4 years old.

I just want my family to be safe. Because I am sometimes polarizing, I fear for their safety.

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

My mother says I was writing before I was crawling. I wrote in the dirt with a twig.

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.

Be not the first by whom the new are tried, Nor yet the last to lay the old aside.

My father wasn’t perfect. He had a temper. I took some of that. He would snap, but the older he got, he started calming down. He learned about life, but the thing that he taught my whole family was that family was the most important thing and, no matter what, if a family member needs you, you go and help them out; you get there.

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.

In our home there was always prayer – aloud, proud and unapologetic.

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 family kinda hit the skids. We were experiencing poverty at that point. We all got a job, where the whole family had to work as security guards and janitors. And I just got angry.

I do have a lot of gays in my family now, but some will never come out.

My parents were both born in Virginia, of undistinguished families – second families, perhaps I should say.

Most of my young years were spent under the boots of the military.

I absolutely believed when I was young because the Tooth Fairy was always good to me. The Tooth Fairy generally left me a dollar or two dollars and, as a kid, that was a lot of money.

On one occasion, I accompanied my father to Pinares de Mayari. I was eight or nine years old. How he enjoyed talking when he left the house in Biran! There he was the proprietor of the land where sugar cane, pasture, and other agricultural crops were planted.

Every man sees in his relatives, and especially in his cousins, a series of grotesque caricatures of himself.

‚Love Story‘ is actually about a guy that I almost dated. But when I introduced him to my family and my friends, they all said they didn’t like him. All of them!

My mom cleaned toilets for a long time, and she’d seen a lot of terrible things, but she was still the strength of our family. And there are women like that all across the country – all around the world – who show that type of fortitude.

I grew up in a musical family; the majority of my growing up was done in Hawaii. It’s what we do. You sing, you dance, you play ukulele and you drink.

That’s one of the biggest things. Never being home, always traveling, having different interests and focusing on different things, just the time aspect of going back home and seeing them, you don’t have that at all. It was a big sacrifice but, at the end of the day, it was worth it.

My sisters like cooking at my place. It has a bit more room, and the food tastes a little bit better. A big pot of spaghetti and sauce, some warm French bread – works all the time. I think I’ve been eating pasta for 26 years.

We will invest in our people, quality education, job opportunity, family, neighborhood, and yes, a thing we call America.

Part of our tradition as black women is that we are universalists. Black children, yellow children, red children, brown children, that is the black woman’s normal, day-to-day relationship. In my family alone, we are about four different colors.

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.

I don’t want to just revolve. I want to evolve. As a man, as a human, as a father, as a lover.

As a kid, even I knew everything about my favourite cricketers. I used to know everything possible. Now I see kids knowing about me. It feels good.

I want to thank God, obviously for the health, for the talent He’s given me, for my family who supports me, for the things that basketball’s taught me on and off the court. For the people that I’ve been able to meet through the game of basketball.

My mom and I have always been there for each other. We had some tough times, but she was always there for me.

I was very worried about my mother, growing up – a lot. I do not want my children to be worried about me.

Once you have six children, you’re committed.

One time, this guy was bothering my mother, and me and my brothers had a stern talking with the guy and a little bit of physicality with him. So he disappeared. But I’m not a magician.

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.

I grew up in the golden age of Flash Gordon and sci-fi.

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

My mother, my grandmother, my uncles would play Ethiopian artists like Aster Aweke and Mulatu Astatke all the time in the house.

I wish I had been home more when the children were growing up. I missed a lot.

My mother would kill me if I posed nude! My mother raised me with certain standards.

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

I have spent every New Year’s Eve since 1992 in Lourdes. I spend the hour of my birth every year in the grotto. It’s a place with meaning for me.

When I am playing baseball, I give it all that I have on the ball field. When the ball game is over, I certainly don’t take it home. My little girl who is sitting out there wouldn’t know the difference between a third strike and a foul ball. We don’t talk about baseball at 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.

We knew sports was important to us and our family, but there are priorities in life.Obviously, faith is foremost; how we did in school is important. If we didn’t handle that business then there were no privileges.

Actors are one family over the entire world.

My mom was a great tennis player, and I remember being six or seven years old watching Steffi Graf and Monica Seles in Wimbledon in my house. I’ve always been a tennis fan.

My parents were the same in the pulpit as they were at home. I think that’s where a lot of preachers‘ kids get off base sometimes. Because they don’t see the same things at both places.

Legacy is a stupid thing! I don’t want a legacy.

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.

I grew up around lots of men – my father, my brothers, my uncles – so I wasn’t intimidated by them.

I had a rat-tail when I was younger. I had this nice Bobby Brown fade, with a rat-tail that was long enough to wrap around my face. I used to chew on the end and bite it.

Most women put off entertaining until the kids are grown.

When I was a child I thought I saw an angel. It had wings and kinda looked like my sister. I opened the door so some light could come into the room, and it sort of faded away. My mother said it was probably my Guardian Angel.

Think about what people are doing on Facebook today. They’re keeping up with their friends and family, but they’re also building an image and identity for themselves, which in a sense is their brand. They’re connecting with the audience that they want to connect to. It’s almost a disadvantage if you’re not on it now.

When I was a kid, I had a tendency to criticize. But when I did, my mum would whisk me off to the bathroom to stand in front of a mirror. Ten minutes, never less. To think about how criticism is a poor reflection on the one who criticizes.

The deep, personal material of the latter half of your life is your children. You can write about your parents when they’re gone, but your children are still going to be here, and you’re going to want them to come and visit you in the nursing home.

Let parents bequeath to their children not riches, but the spirit of reverence.

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.

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

Family quarrels are bitter things. They don’t go according to any rules. They’re not like aches or wounds, they’re more like splits in the skin that won’t heal because there’s not enough material.

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.

I know that a Christmas tree farm in Pennsylvania is about the most random place for a country singer to come from, but I had an awesome childhood.