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

I know from having had a child, and from having been a child myself, that children will copy you.

Always kiss your children goodnight, even if they’re already asleep.

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

Where thou art, that is home.

My grandpa was a preacher.

Every man needs slaves like he needs clean air. To rule is to breathe, is it not? And even the most disenfranchised get to breathe. The lowest on the social scale have their spouses or their children.

Youth is a wonderful thing. What a crime to waste it on children.

When you work with kids, especially, you want to be ready to turn the camera on at a moment’s notice.

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.

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.

I want to work; then, as my kids get older, I want to have adventures. I want to visit all their countries: learn and live inside all their cultures.

When we talk about mortality, we are talking about our children.

Today, the news is scandals; that is news, but the many children who don’t have food – that’s not news. This is grave. We can’t rest easy while things are this way.

I have to tell you, my seven-year-old granddaughter said to my daughter, her mother, ‚So what’s the big deal about Grandma Maddy having been Secretary of State? Only girls are Secretaries of State.‘ Most of her lifetime, it’s true. But at the time it really was a big deal.

Quite frankly, teachers are the only profession that teach our children.

Familiarity breeds contempt – and children.

Brad and I have never wanted our kids to be actors, but we also want them to be around film and be a part of Mommy and Daddy’s life and for it not to be kept from them, either. We just want them to have a good, healthy relationship with it.

My elder brothers were all put apprentices to different trades. I was put to the grammar-school at eight years of age, my father intending to devote me, as the tithe of his sons, to the service of the Church.

A child who is allowed to be disrespectful to his parents will not have true respect for anyone.

The whole commerce between master and slave is a perpetual exercise of the most boisterous passions, the most unremitting despotism on the one part, and degrading submissions on the other. Our children see this, and learn to imitate it.

First and foremost, we need to be the adults we want our children to be. We should watch our own gossiping and anger. We should model the kindness we want to see.

I always wanted a family.

Unfortunately, the highly curious student is a small percentage of the kids.

I like to think my dad was easygoing and kind, and I think some of those things have been passed down. I am like him in a sense of being positive and hopeful. He was compassionate, and I’ve got a lot of that in me as well.

My family is very good about visiting me, and other friends as well.

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.

For an Ethiopian mother, if you have a chubby kid, it means you’re doing something good.

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.

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?‘

The death of my father is probably the biggest thing that I ever faced. Daddy and I were best friends.

Our need for certainty in an endeavor as uncertain as raising children makes explicit ‚how-to-parent‘ strategies both seductive and dangerous.

My husband and I had to raise five of my younger brothers and sisters. They lived with us. We sent them to school.

My friend has a baby. I’m recording all the noises he makes so later I can ask him what he meant.

The only thing I have to go by is what my mother and father told me, how I was brought up.

I’m not an analyzer. I’ve got a son that analyzes everything and everybody. But I don’t analyze people.

You know, my family and friends have never been yes-men: ‚Yes, you’re doing the right thing, you’re always right.‘ No, they tell me when I’m wrong, and that’s why I’ve been able to stay who I am and stay humble.

I made a decision when my father passed away that I was going to be who God made me to be and not try to preach like my father.

I refuse to feel guilty. I feel guilty about too much in my life but not about money. I went through periods when I had nothing, so somebody in my family has to get stinkin‘ wealthy.

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

To bring a healthy child into this world, raise them right and watch them grow is the biggest miracle there is.

Actors are one family over the entire world.

For me, it’s about the way I carry myself and the way I treat other people. My relationship and how I feel about God and what He does for me, is something deeply personal. It’s where I came from, my family, I was brought up in a religious household and that’s very important to me.

Remember that children, marriages, and flower gardens reflect the kind of care they get.

What I tell my kids is, ‚I’m preparing you for college and for life. So, having independence, knowing how to set your own boundaries, figuring out how to make that balance. We still have screen-time rules.‘

I’ve lost both parents in the last two years, so you pick up on that stuff. That’s the most terrible thing about being an author – standing there at your mother’s funeral, but you don’t switch the author off. So your own innermost thoughts are grist for the mill.

I’m not great at bedtime stories. Bedtime stories are supposed to put the kid to sleep. My kid gets riled up and then my wife has to come in and go, ‚All right! Get out of the room.‘

War may sometimes be a necessary evil. But no matter how necessary, it is always an evil, never a good. We will not learn how to live together in peace by killing each other’s children.

If I feel good about my parenting, I have no interest in judging other people’s choices. If I feel good about my body, I don’t go around making fun of other people’s weight or appearance. We’re hard on each other because we’re using each other as a launching pad out of our own perceived deficiency.

We will not learn how to live together in peace by killing each other’s children.

My father was a swim teacher. We used to swim before school, swim after school.

The side of fairytales I don’t like is that they always have happy endings, that there’s just good and evil, and things are perfect. But life is a little more complicated, and that’s what I try to teach my kids.

The kids never listen to you, especially the youngest ones.

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

I still learn, but I think it’s the best thing in life to have a kid.

We should not look down on our first ancestors.

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.

My grandfather once ventured upon publishing a volume of hymns. I never heard anyone speak in their favour or argue that they ought to have been sung in the congregation. In that volume, he promised a second if the first should prove acceptable. We forgive him the first collection because he did not inflict another.

Too many people treat parenting like it’s the 20th item on their to-do list.

Taking care of children has nothing to do with politics. I think perhaps with time, instead of there being a politicization of humanitarian aid, there will be a humanization of politics.

My mom is American, so I was raised in her household in my formative years.