Love begins by taking care of the closest ones – the ones at home.

So long as the memory of certain beloved friends lives in my heart, I shall say that life is good.

Before I was born, my father told my mother, ‚If it’s a boy, he’s going to be a scientist.‘

What keeps me motivated is love and passion.

Love is a better teacher than duty.

A mother defends herself with a heart filled with love before doing so with words. I wonder whether there is any love for the church in the hearts of those who pay so much attention to the scandals.

Creative people don’t behave very well generally. If you’re looking for examples of good relationships in show business, you’re gonna be depressed real fast. I don’t have time for anything else right now but work and my daughter. She’s my first priority.

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

I don’t like cream puff, corny guys. Usually, they are the nice guys, the ones that won’t hurt you. They’ll pull out the chair for you and the whole nine yards. Everything is perfect and boring.

The first magic of love is our ignorance that it can ever end.

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

Man will do many things to get himself loved, he will do all things to get himself envied.

Power is of two kinds. One is obtained by the fear of punishment and the other by acts of love. Power based on love is a thousand times more effective and permanent then the one derived from fear of punishment.

But that intimacy of mutual embarrassment, in which each feels that the other is feeling something, having once existed, its effect is not to be done away with.

I learned a great many years ago that in a fight between husband and wife, a third party should never get between the woman’s skillet and the man’s ax-helve.

If people wonder, yes, Hillary Clinton is my friend. She has been a friend to me and Barack and Malia and Sasha, and Bill and Chelsea have been embracing and supportive from the very day my husband took the oath of office.

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

I think love is one of the purest things you can sing about. One of the best things you can sing about.

The Sabbath provides a wonderful opportunity to strengthen family ties.

You gotta understand: I believe a woman should praise the man, the king. If you holding it down for your woman, I feel like the woman should praise. And the man should praise the queen.

To give pleasure to a single heart by a single act is better than a thousand heads bowing in prayer.

The best way to find out if you can trust somebody is to trust them.

The important thing is to be in love with something.

Man’s only true happiness is to live in hope of something to be won by him. Reverence something to be worshipped by him, and love something to be cherished by him, forever.

Meditation is to get insight, to get understanding and compassion, and when you have them, you are compelled to act.

All that I am, or hope to be, I owe to my angel mother.

My family was a poor farming family, and we lived under absolute segregation.

I think it matters whether someone has a good heart.

Perhaps travel cannot prevent bigotry, but by demonstrating that all peoples cry, laugh, eat, worry, and die, it can introduce the idea that if we try and understand each other, we may even become friends.

The first question which the priest and the Levite asked was: ‚If I stop to help this man, what will happen to me?‘ But… the good Samaritan reversed the question: ‚If I do not stop to help this man, what will happen to him?‘

You want to do good things, and once you’ve done a couple of good things in a row, you think ‚Well gee, let’s not mess this up.‘ But I am lucky at this point that I have something I really love to do, and it completely holds my attention. I never feel frustrated by it.

When we quarrel, how we wish we had been blameless.

My favorite thing in life is writing about life, specifically the parts of life concerning love. Because, as far as I’m concerned, love is absolutely everything.

My wife, a schoolteacher, very disciplined. If you think I’m tough, trust me, and wait till you see when the children are on the naughty step. It’s hilarious. So we decided that I’m going to work like a donkey and provide amazing support for the family.

Friends are thieves of time.

Nothing can bring a real sense of security into the home except true love.

You start to become successful, and everybody starts to drive your money train to the bank, and they’re not thinking anymore about what you want as an artist or if any of that even matters to you. It genuinely upsets people in my life that I don’t care about money, and that’s not my problem.

Exaggeration is a blood relation to falsehood and nearly as blamable.

What I remember as a child is that other kids didn’t care about suffering. I always did.

Whoever does not have a good father should procure one.

Love is not altogether a delirium, yet it has many points in common therewith.

We learn martial arts as helping weakness. You never fight for people to get hurt. You’re always helping people.

If women were particular about men’s characters, they would never get married at all.

I argue thee that love is life. And life hath immortality.

It’s annoying, but justice and equality are mates. Aren’t they? Justice always wants to hang out with equality. And equality is a real pain.

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.

The only time people dislike gossip is when you gossip about them.

He has achieved success who has worked well, laughed often, and loved much.

Where there is love there is life.

My mother was very strong. Once, she picked up a coconut and smashed it against my father’s head. It taught me about women defending themselves and not collapsing in a heap.

Marriage is a series of desperate arguments people feel passionately about.

I think everyone should approach relationships from the perspective of playing it straight and giving someone the benefit of the doubt. Until he establishes that this is a game. And if it’s a game, you need to win. The best thing to do is just walk away from the table.

I’ve been very lucky. I come from a very close family.

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.

It is in the thirties that we want friends. In the forties we know they won’t save us any more than love did.

The loss of young first love is so painful that it borders on the ludicrous.

There is nothing I love as much as a good fight.

Marriage is scary to me, man.

People, even more than things, have to be restored, renewed, revived, reclaimed, and redeemed; never throw out anyone.

Accident counts for as much in companionship as in marriage.

I think it is a sin to look at another person as inferior to yourself because of race or because of ethnic background, and I think the greatest thing to do is to pray that God will give you love for them, and I do.