I’m an only child.

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.

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

Your children will see what you’re all about by what you live rather than what you say.

I have always marched to my own beat, and most frequently, it was inconsistent not only with my own immediate family, but with my culture as well.

I don’t think that much about my relationship with my mother and what it did to me. I sometimes feel terrible regret about her, what her life must have been like. Often, when I’m enjoying something, I think of how meager her rewards were and how much courage, in a way, she needed to go on living.

Fathers should be neither seen nor heard. That is the only proper basis for family life.

My fans saw me get engaged, saw me make that woman my wife, me having kids, me divorcing, me talking about divorce before the divorce, me talking about my kids‘ reaction to that divorce.

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.

Occasionally I’ve seen children become heavy-handed and insensitive when dealing with their aging parents, and it only caused resentment and hard feelings.

It is a melancholy truth that even great men have their poor relations.

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.

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.

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

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.

My mother was a powerful influence. She made me toe the line. If I didn’t have a perfect report card, she showed her disappointment.

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.

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

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

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

I don’t think my parents liked me. They put a live teddy bear in my crib.

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.

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

When you’re around the kids, you feel like you act the most grown up just because you’re supposed to lead. I say things, like every other parent, that reminds you of your own parents. One thing I do know about being a parent, you understand why your father was in a bad mood a lot.

We were never intimate mother and children while she was our mother – but… when she became our child, the affection came.

The father is always a Republican toward his son, and his mother’s always a Democrat.

Me and my dad are friends. We’re cool. I’ll never be disappointed again, because I don’t expect anything anymore from him. I just let him exist, and that’s how we get along.

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

I’ve felt like an outsider all my life. It comes from my mother, who always felt like an outsider in my father’s family. She was a powerful woman, and she motivated my father.

My daughter has impressions that she does of me.

People change because of kids. They change how they eat. They change the way they think. They change the way they see one another.

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

The roots of the problems we face in the world, in our national life, and in our family and personal lives are spiritual.

Men are what their mothers made them.

The place of the father in the modern suburban family is a very small one, particularly if he plays golf.

I’ve been called a moron since I was about four. My father called me a moron. My grandfather said I was a moron. And a lot of times when I’m driving, I hear I’m a moron. I like being a moron.

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

My mom’s one of 13 siblings, and they all got six kids, and till I was 13 everybody was in Compton.

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

I think daughters can change the perception of their fathers.

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

It takes three to make a child.

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.‘

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

I’ve never been pregnant, so I just feel God didn’t mean for me to have kids so that everybody else’s children could be mine.

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.

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.

My dad was never married. He was kind of a rolling stone. But he was never disrespectful. At the same time, even though he had women in his life when I was a kid, there wasn’t any consistency.

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

My daughter doesn’t even get my humor. She’s like, ‚Um, no. I don’t get it, Dad. Mmm, no, not that one, Dad.‘

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.

My mother was a professional sick person; she took a lot of pain pills. There are many people like that. It’s just how they are used to getting attention. I always remember she’s the daughter of alcoholics who’d leave her alone at Christmas time.

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

When I was young, my brother David and I were farmed off to foster homes, and I spent time in orphanages. My father abandoned us. Here’s the most important person in my life, and I never met him.

Do you know what you call those who use towels and never wash them, eat meals and never do the dishes, sit in rooms they never clean, and are entertained till they drop? If you have just answered, ‚A house guest,‘ you’re wrong because I have just described my kids.

Never fret for an only son, the idea of failure will never occur to him.

Children wish fathers looked but with their eyes; fathers that children with their judgment looked; and either may be wrong.

The fundamental defect of fathers, in our competitive society, is that they want their children to be a credit to them.

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

It’s true that I’ve never had a burning desire to rebel against my parents.

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.