It is totally different making films in the East than in the West. In the East, I make my own Jackie Chan films, and it’s like my family. Sometimes I pick up the camera because I choreograph all the fighting scenes, even when I’m not fighting. I don’t have my own chair. I just sit on the set with everybody.

When I think of the love I feel for each member of our family, I sense, to a slight degree, the love that our Heavenly Father bears for His children.

We care for each other and care about our family, and we are both working towards the same goal.

We will always be a family. Always.

I felt unhappy and trapped. If I left baseball, where could I go, what could I do to earn enough money to help my mother and to marry Rachel? The solution to my problem was only days away in the hands of a tough, shrewd, courageous man called Branch Rickey, the president of the Brooklyn Dodgers.

Life guided me to being a bodyguard, protecting people, then in the movies, so I’m happy with everything because basically all I ever wanted to do was be a good son and take care of my mother.

For me, already being part of a single parent household and knowing it was just me and my mom, you’d would wake up times and hope that the next day you’d be able to be alongside your mother because she was out trying to make sure that I was taken care of. But all I cared about was her being home.

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 son is becoming me – just a silly, silly prankster guy.

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.

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.

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

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.

I’d like to think that I’m a calm and sweet person. I tend to be very playful at home with my children, but in life… we have to fight our battles – our work battles, our political battles, our personal battles – and we’re focused.

A family shares hardships and a connected history.

My mother, I suppose, is still a main figure in my life because her life was so sad and unfair, and she so brave, but also because she was determined to make me into the Sunday-school-recitation little girl I was, from the age of seven or so, fighting not to be.

I imagine I will spend my days traveling from country to country to visit our children, who I expect will live around the world.

My mother was always fascinated with the fact that I could rhyme so much stuff.

I just make good movies. That’s the way I thank my fans.

If you cannot get rid of the family skeleton, you may as well make it dance.

I worked with Steven Spielberg on Amistad… he seemed so very secure in himself that he let me do things.

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

Family home evening is more for the purpose of teaching values and gospel principles, displaying talents and enjoying different kinds of family fun and activities.

We lived in a tall, narrow Victorian house, which my parents had bought very cheaply during the war, when everyone thought London was going to be bombed flat. In fact, a V-2 rocket landed a few houses away from ours. I was away with my mother and sister at the time, but my father was in the house.

Home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in.

And when I was young, my family was perfectly nice. I write a lot about it, as you noticed. But it was rather limited. I think, I don’t think anyone in my family would really feel I’d done them an injustice by saying that. We didn’t see many people. There were many books. It was as if I wanted to get away from home.

Feels good to try, but playing a father, I’m getting a little older. I see now that I’m taking it more serious and I do want that lifestyle.

My whole family have all been through a difficult time. My focus is my children, our children.

In search of my mother’s garden, I found my own.

When I’m writing, I don’t feel neurotic. So it’s better for the family if I’m working.

This character feels so much like my brother. He has two children. He has a wife. He works with me. He chooses to stay in New Hampshire because he wants his kids to grow up in the school they started with. He doesn’t want them to lose friends. He is his family’s hero.

People who work for me know that family comes first. And I’m fortunate to have a family that is very supportive of the work I do, so I don’t have to live two separate lives.

You know, my Grandpop Finnegan used to have an expression: he used to say, ‚Joey, the guy in Olyphant’s out of work, it’s an economic slowdown. When your brother-in-law’s out of work, it’s a recession. When you’re out of work, it’s a depression.‘

I like having my hands in the clay. I like the movie-making process.

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

If we are peaceful, if we are happy, we can smile, and everyone in our family, our entire society, will benefit from our peace.

She would have thrived as a grandmother. I know how much she would have contributed to their lives, and I am sad they will miss out on that.

I think your values are always influenced by your family and your community.

I was totally dominated and revered my father. I admired everything he did. He was a great sports person. He loved me. I was his only boy at that time, before my brother Billy came along.

My mother was a full-time mother. She didn’t have much of her own career, her own life, her own experiences… everything was for her children. I will never be as good a mother as she was. She was just grace incarnate. She was the most generous, loving – she’s better than me.

There was the time I bought three cars in the span of three or four weeks. It was crazy; it wasn’t greedy. It was mine, my girl’s, my mom’s. I got Benzes for my ladies. But I felt crazy. You have to understand I come from a world where we’re very modest. But that’s not greedy. That’s nice, right?

I want kids. I want a soccer team, and I want a husband.

It was times like these when I thought my father, who hated guns and had never been to any wars, was the bravest man who ever lived.

You bring children into the world. You love them with heart and soul.

The name Zahra was to have been lman’s own name at birth, but a senior member of the family changed it to lman at the last minute.

There was never a child so lovely but his mother was glad to get him to sleep.

For me, often, there’s such a cloud of melancholia about knowing I’m going to have to leave my daughter on her own. I don’t know what age that is going to be, thank God. It just doubles me up in grief.

He that hath wife and children hath given hostages to fortune; for they are impediments to great enterprises, either of virtue or mischief.

My enthusiasm seems to cause my world to endlessly offer me cooperative, co-creating experiences. I’m willing and I’m eager, and not just about my writing – I feel the same way about staying in shape, enjoying my family, giving a lecture, or whatever it may be.

Nobody can ever make enough money for as many poor relatives as I’ve got. Somebody’s got a sick kid, or somebody needs an operation, somebody ain’t got this, somebody ain’t got that. Or to give the kids all a car when they graduate.

I believe that my parents did wonderful things for us.

The thing I want more than anything else? I want to have children. I used to feel for every child I had, I would adopt another.

All of my brothers and sisters are very talented. They all sang all right.

My first job in all honesty is going to continue to be mom-in-chief. Making sure that in this transition, which will be even more of a transition for the girls… that they are settled and that they know they will continue to be the center of our universe.

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

My dad was the town drunk. Most of the time that’s not so bad; but New York City?

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.

Family and friendships are two of the greatest facilitators of happiness.

I’ve done films where we don’t rehearse, and I’ve done films where we heavily rehearse. I like rehearsals.

What’s so beautiful about Miami is that we support each other. We’re just one big family, not just the entertainers, just everyone in general.

Pfft, I hate Christmas Day. It’s for children and families. Not for people like me.