I’m not a parenting expert. In fact, I’m not sure that I even believe in the idea of ‚parenting experts.‘ I’m an engaged, imperfect parent and a passionate researcher. I’m an experienced mapmaker and a stumbling traveler. Like many of you, parenting is by far my boldest and most daring adventure.

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

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

You learn that there’s no right way to do it, no wrong way to do it. It’s just what you feel comfortable with, to trust that, and don’t let anybody box you in to a certain style of parenting or make you feel a certain way about what your kids do.

Tyranny or slavery, born of selfishness, are the two educational methods of parents; all gradations of tyranny or slavery.

One of the best ways to see tree flowers is to climb one of the tallest trees and to get into close, tingling touch with them, and then look broad.

Children are our most valuable natural resource.

Many a trip continues long after movement in time and space have ceased.

None of my kids want to be actors. They are actually very interested in being musicians. I think they like the process of film from the outside. Mad is interested in editing. Pax loves music and deejaying.

Like all great travellers, I have seen more than I remember, and remember more than I have seen.

These technologies can make life easier, can let us touch people we might not otherwise. You may have a child with a birth defect and be able to get in touch with other parents and support groups, get medical information, the latest experimental drugs. These things can profoundly influence life. I’m not downplaying that.

If you want someone to say, ‚She’s so sweet, and she’s so cute, and, honey, point your foot,‘ that’s not my school. You can go to the YMCA and have a nobody teach your kid if that’s what you want to hear.

Just talk to me as a father – not what the Constitution says. What do you feel?

I have spent the greater part of my life in a hotel room with seven or eight kids, looking after everyone, sorting out fights, wiping noses, handing out towels, not having a clean towel left for me.

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

I had to make a choice at one point in my life, of missing films or missing my children. It was a very easy decision to make because I missed my children so very much.

I love being a dad. I just love it.

It was wonderful to find America, but it would have been more wonderful to miss it.

My three children have brought me great joy.

Anyone who doesn’t have a great time in San Francisco is pretty much dead to me.

There’s nothing better than having a baby. I’ve always loved children. I used to work summers at the YMCA and be in charge of, like, 30 preschool kids. I knew that when I had a child, I’d be overwhelmed, and it’s true… I can’t tell you how much my attitude has changed since we’ve got Frances. Holding my baby is the best drug in the world.

A lot of people can’t stand touring but to me it’s like breathing. I do it because I’m driven to do it.

Following the light of the sun, we left the Old World.

There’s a certain amount of freedom involved in cycling: you’re self-propelled and decide exactly where to go. If you see something that catches your eye to the left, you can veer off there, which isn’t so easy in a car, and you can’t cover as much ground walking.

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

It goes without saying that you should never have more children than you have car windows.

Any book that helps a child to form a habit of reading, to make reading one of his deep and continuing needs, is good for him.

You definitely want your kids to understand their heritage, but I don’t want my kids to just focus on being black. They are people. I don’t want them to judge other people or to be judged. I want them to be good people, so good people will treat them accordingly. I preach that to my kids and everything else falls into place.

If I walked into the kitchen without washing my hands as a kid, I’d hear a loud ‚A-hem!‘ from my mother or grandmother. Now I count on other people to do the same.

The best way to give advice to your children is to find out what they want and then advise them to do it.

I’ve worked with children all my life.

I like to think of Everest as a great mountaineering challenge, and when you’ve got people just streaming up the mountain – well, many of them are just climbing it to get their name in the paper, really.

To be a successful father… there’s one absolute rule: when you have a kid, don’t look at it for the first two years.

I had my first baby at twenty-one.

Life is an adventure, it’s not a package tour.

Like every parent, when you start your family, your life completely changes. And you completely live for someone else. I find that the most extraordinary thing. Your life is handed over to someone else. From that moment on, they come first in every choice you make. It’s the most wonderful thing.

You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth.

If there is anything that we wish to change in the child, we should first examine it and see whether it is not something that could better be changed in ourselves.

I go to sleep thinking about my kids being spoiled and I wake up thinking about it.

It will be a killer, and a chiller, and a thriller, when I get the gorilla in Manila.

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.

The whole object of travel is not to set foot on foreign land; it is at last to set foot on one’s own country as a foreign land.

On the summit of Everest, I had a feeling of great satisfaction to be first there.

Let me recommend the best medicine in the world: a long journey, at a mild season, through a pleasant country, in easy stages.

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 son’s full real name is Duncan Zowie Haywood. As a toddler, he was called by his second name Zowie. But it was such an identifiable name during the Seventies that if I called him loudly in public places, everyone would turn to stare, so I started calling him Joey to take the pressure off.

The truth is you don’t know what is going to happen tomorrow. Life is a crazy ride, and nothing is guaranteed.

Kids will remind you that, even though you’ve gone down a road 100 times, it’s brand new for them – and that’s healthy.

After having dispatched a meal, I went ashore, and found no habitation save a single house, and that without an occupant; we had no doubt that the people had fled in terror at our approach, as the house was completely furnished.

The clearest way into the Universe is through a forest wilderness.

A life without adventure is likely to be unsatisfying, but a life in which adventure is allowed to take whatever form it will is sure to be short.

It wasn’t so long ago that I was a working mom myself. And I know that sometimes, much as we all hate to admit it, it’s just easier to park the kids in front of the TV for a few hours, so we can pay the bills or do the laundry or just have some peace and quiet for a change.

But I was the most unashamed lone parent you were ever going to meet.

Our lifestyle was not in any way a negative. That was not the problem. That is and will remain one of the wonderful opportunities we are able to give our children.

I wasn’t going to shy away from getting married when I did and having a baby young and starting a family, even with the job that I chose.

In general my children refuse to eat anything that hasn’t danced in television.

I will say this: one of the things that is a pain when you’re expecting children is how much advice unsolicited people give you when you’re not asking for it.

Men of age object too much, consult too long, adventure too little, repent too soon, and seldom drive business home to the full period, but content themselves with a mediocrity of success.

The kids are old enough now – I just want to let them be kids. I don’t want to comment on them too much. They’re at an age where I just want to let them be kids.

If a woman can, by careful selection of a father and nourishment of herself, produce a citizen with efficient senses, sound organs and a good digestion, she should clearly be secured a sufficient reward for that natural service to make her willing to undertake and repeat it.

My mother insisted that her children read.