Most women put off entertaining until the kids are grown.

I had this child, and it destroyed my family.

The first wealth is health.

I’m attracted to women who are smart and funny and ambitious and have lives of their own and great families. Isn’t that what attracts anyone?

Women. They are a complete mystery.

I’ve got incredible support from my wife and family and people around me. I’ve got great people around me who handle anything on the outside, business-wise, who help free me up to create in my job.

As an example to others, and not that I care for moderation myself, it has always been my rule never to smoke when asleep, and never to refrain from smoking when awake.

As a father, I always want my son to be perfect. When he was young, I tried to train him in martial arts, but he said, ‚I don’t want to become like Bruce Lee’s son, with everybody telling me how good my father was.‘ I just think my son is too lazy.

Milk is for babies. When you grow up you have to drink beer.

I don’t concern myself with award. I’d been to the party enough times to know it really didn’t matter.

I understand the importance of bondage between parent and child.

That’s the most terrible thing about being an author – standing there at your mother’s funeral, but you don’t switch the author off. So your own innermost thoughts are grist for the mill. Who was it said – one of the famous lady novelists – ‚unhappy is the family that contains an author‘?

My parents shared not only an improbable love, they shared an abiding faith in the possibilities of this nation. They would give me an African name, Barack, or blessed, believing that in a tolerant America your name is no barrier to success.

I have no problem yelling at anybody’s kid – free of charge!

I’ve been my mom’s kitchen helper since I was a little kid.

In the Church, and in the journey of faith, women have had and still have a special role in opening doors to the Lord.

I live half the year on Necker, a tiny island in the Caribbean, and it’s always full of people in party mode. Everyone comes up to the big house, and we’ll be dancing until the early hours to the island’s band, the Front Line.

There are women who can make you feel more with their bodies and their souls, but these are the exact women who will turn the knife into you right in front of the crowd. Of course, I expect this, but the knife still cuts.

My parents were divorced by the time I was even conscious – like, I don’t remember them ever being together.

Children are educated by what the grown-up is and not by his talk.

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.

I would as soon leave my son a curse as the almighty dollar.

I believe everyone should have a good death. You know, with your grandchildren around you, a bit of sobbing. Because after all, tears are appropriate on a death bed. And you say goodbye to your loved ones, making certain that one of them has been left behind to look after the shop.

He didn’t come out of my belly, but my God, I’ve made his bones, because I’ve attended to every meal, and how he sleeps, and the fact that he swims like a fish because I took him to the ocean. I’m so proud of all those things. But he is my biggest pride.

My concern is that contention is becoming accepted as a way of life.

Never lend your car to anyone to whom you have given birth.

My family didn’t have a lot of money, so I worked my heart out to get my degrees. But the minute I graduated, suddenly everyone was asking me, ‚Well, when are you going to get married and start having kids?‘ And the truth is I had no idea how I would balance the expected role of wife and mother with a challenging career.

I’ve lived in a big showplace house, and I never want to live again in a house that overshadows me.

No matter how happily a woman may be married, it always pleases her to discover that there is a nice man who wishes that she were not.

Homework’s hard. Especially math. My kids joke with me. They tell me they have homework. I say, ‚Okay.‘ And then I sit down and they say, ‚It’s math.‘ ‚No! Not math! English, history, anything!‘

A song has to take on character, shape, body and influence people to an extent that they use it for their own devices. It must affect them not just as a song, but as a lifestyle.

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.

If you’ve ever hauled a 28-pound two-year-old around New York, you’ll find that men fold at the knees a lot quicker than women.

Upon the farm of the uncle with whom I lived, we did know of the mortgage as some dreadful damper on youthful hopes of things that could not be bought. I do have a vivid recollection that the major purpose of a farm was to produce a living right on the spot for the family.

I do not like broccoli. And I haven’t liked it since I was a little kid and my mother made me eat it. And I’m President of the United States and I’m not going to eat any more broccoli.

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

My mother was a dominant force in our family. And I always saw her as the leader. And that was great for me as a young woman, because I never saw that women had to be dominated by men.

My husband and I had to raise five of my younger brothers and sisters. They lived with us. We sent them to school.

In 1969, I gave up women and alcohol – it was the worst 20 minutes of my life.

I have to be on such a strict diet constantly.

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

I continue to care for President Obama and for his family. I think that in many ways they are very courageous people, and I honor that, because I know what it means to live as a black person in a racist America.

Be nice to your children. After all, they are going to choose your nursing home.

There’s a personality trait known as agreeableness. Agreeable people are compassionate and polite. And agreeable people get paid less than disagreeable people for the same job. Women are more agreeable than men.

Women tend to be more intuitive, or to admit to being intuitive, and maybe the hard science approach isn’t so attractive. The way that science is taught is very cold. I would never have become a scientist if I had been taught like that.

I listen to my mother, and that keeps me out of trouble. I’m a good son.

If I wouldn’t have found Courtney, I probably would have carried on with a bisexual lifestyle.

Exercise is bunk. If you are healthy, you don’t need it: if you are sick you should not take it.

There’s nothing – I’ve bought everything I want. I don’t like yachts or anything; you know, I’m not a yacht person, and I’ve got pretty much the nicest plane I’d want to have.

Phil Niekro and his brother were pitching against each other in Atlanta. Their parents were sitting right behind home plate. I saw their folks more that day than they did the whole weekend.

In individuals, insanity is rare; but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule.

When I was a youngster I lived with different families. I nearly always felt closer to the man of the house. Maybe because I always dreamed of having a father of my own.

My mother was determined to make us independent. When I was four years old, she stopped the car a few miles from our house and made me find my own way home across the fields. I got hopelessly lost.

A woman can bring a new love to each man she loves, providing there are not too many.

There’s a bond among a kitchen staff, I think. You spend more time with your chef in the kitchen than you do with your own family.

We had problems like all families but we had a lot of love. I was extremely loved. We always felt we had each other.

Encouragement to all women is – let us try to offer help before we have to offer therapy. That is to say, let’s see if we can’t prevent being ill by trying to offer a love of prevention before illness.

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.

You send a boy to school in order to make friends – the right sort.

I get a thrill meeting kids who are into alternative music.

Let parents bequeath to their children not riches, but the spirit of reverence.