I’m sure most parents read to their children to explain what certain things mean. So books are a good way to convey a message to anybody. Everybody reads.

I am not a fan of books.

The short words are best, and the old words are the best of all.

The royal road to a man’s heart is to talk to him about the things he treasures most.

There are some important differences between me and Tony Stark, like I have five kids, so I spend more time going to Disneyland than parties.

In a certain way, it’s the sound of the words, the inflection and the way the song is sung and the way it fits the melody and the way the syllables are on the tongue that has as much of the meaning as the actual, literal words.

We make the Sabbath a delight when we teach the gospel to our children.

The best book, like the best speech, will do it all – make us laugh, think, cry and cheer – preferably in that order.

Truth is so hard to tell, it sometimes needs fiction to make it plausible.

The trend of opinion among eugenists is that we must make marriage more difficult. Certainly no one who is not a desirable parent should be permitted to produce progeny.

When I tell a child something the first time, I’m nice. The 15th time, I start to get aggravated.

Never find fault with the absent.

I have a lot of other stuff to accomplish before I get to kids. Whenever the time is right, I’ll just know. If I had a girl, she’d probably be really rebellious. She would be like a bundle of karma. I would love to bring them up in Barbados.

Of all nature’s gifts to the human race, what is sweeter to a man than his children?

When I’m around the kids I feel like I act the most grown-up just because you’re supposed to. And I say things, like every other day, that remind me of my own parents.

When it comes to gossip, I have to readily admit men are as guilty as women.

If you want to get each individual’s honest opinion, you don’t want that opinion to be influenced by others who are present, much less allow a group to coordinate what they are going to say.

If there is any one secret of success, it lies in the ability to get the other person’s point of view and see things from that person’s angle as well as from your own.

By giving people the power to share, we’re making the world more transparent.

Every now and then I read a poem that does touch something in me, but I never turn to poetry for solace or pleasure in the way that I throw myself into prose.

To be clear: we have fights and problems like any other couple.

I can express myself.

Literature is my Utopia. Here I am not disenfranchised. No barrier of the senses shuts me out from the sweet, gracious discourses of my book friends. They talk to me without embarrassment or awkwardness.

Censorship ends in logical completeness when nobody is allowed to read any books except the books that nobody reads.

If you reveal your secrets to the wind, you should not blame the wind for revealing them to the trees.

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.

No one knows who is listening, say nothing you would not wish put in the newspapers.

I try to read as much as I can. I try to read an informative article every day. I try to stay read up on our world issues.

Reading computer manuals without the hardware is as frustrating as reading sex manuals without the software.

If Jesus were here today, he wouldn’t be riding around on a donkey. He’d be taking a plane, he’d be using the media.

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

My mother had a great deal of trouble with me, but I think she enjoyed it.

I would never want a book’s autograph. I am a proud non-reader of books.

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.

The American people are entitled to see the president and to hear his views directly, and not to see him only through the press.

Sometimes cameras and television are good to people and sometimes they aren’t. I don’t know if its the way you say it, or how you look.

Part of what confuses people in times of upheaval is that you’re getting so many different points of view and directions and so and so, how to do this and do that. And a lot of it is written in a language that honestly most people cannot understand.

I spent three days a week for 10 years educating myself in the public library, and it’s better than college. People should educate themselves – you can get a complete education for no money. At the end of 10 years, I had read every book in the library and I’d written a thousand stories.

Digital technology allows us a much larger scope to tell stories that were pretty much the grounds of the literary media.

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.

There is always another way to say the same thing that doesn’t look at all like the way you said it before. I don’t know what the reason for this is. I think it is somehow a representation of the simplicity of nature.

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

One merit of poetry few persons will deny: it says more and in fewer words than prose.

You carry Mother Earth within you. She is not outside of you. Mother Earth is not just your environment. In that insight of inter-being, it is possible to have real communication with the Earth, which is the highest form of prayer.

Reading is to the mind what exercise is to the body.

You don’t read in your own field. You read in that field when you’re young, so that you can learn.

If you want what you’re saying heard, then take your time and say it so that the listener will actually hear it. You might save somebody’s life. Your own, first.

These wretched babies don’t come until they are ready.

The uncertainty of parenting can bring up feelings in us that range from frustration to terror.

What can I say? I’m a talker.

I was reading the dictionary. I thought it was a poem about everything.

The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one’s real and one’s declared aims, one turns, as it were, instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish squirting out ink.

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

When I write, the story is always uppermost in my mind, and I feel that everything must be sacrificed to it. All elegant passages, all the curious details, all the so-called beautiful writing – if they are not truly relevant to what I am trying to say, then they have to go.

The influence of a mother upon the lives of her children cannot be measured. They know and absorb her example and attitudes when it comes to questions of honesty, temperance, kindness, and industry.

We don’t need to share the same opinions as others, but we need to be respectful.

I’m always trying. Between every book, I think, ‚Well now, it’s time to get down to the serious stuff.‘

I think about the milestones from my childhood and what it will be like to watch our kids go through them. Taking Riley to her first day of school was a whirlwind. I can’t imagine what middle school is going to be like, and high school, and graduation.

Anybody can be specific and obvious. That’s always been the easy way. It’s not that it’s so difficult to be unspecific and less obvious; it’s just that there’s nothing, absolutely nothing, to be specific and obvious about.

I’ve been reading tabloids since I was nine. I love a good story.

Why shouldn’t truth be stranger than fiction? Fiction, after all, has to make sense.