My father wasn’t a cruel man. And I loved him. But he was a pretty tough character. His own father was even tougher – one of those Victorians, hard as iron – but my dad was tough enough.

I’m blessed to have such a tight-knit family that we can talk about anything. Whether we talk frequently or not, since we’re on separate ends of the country, there are a lot of moving parts, and we always stay tight and find that center ground that keeps us together.

Having a child, that’s always been my biggest fear. I want a child and I fear a child.

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

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

I don’t know who my grandfather was; I am much more concerned to know what his grandson will be.

A person once asked me, in a provocative manner, if I approved of homosexuality. I replied with another question: ‚Tell me: when God looks at a gay person, does he endorse the existence of this person with love, or reject and condemn this person?‘ We must always consider the person.

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

God’s love is too great to be confined to any one side of a conflict or to any one religion.

We are all born for love. It is the principle of existence, and its only end.

Wives are people who feel they don’t dance enough.

A letdown is worth a few songs. A heartbreak is worth a few albums.

My father considered a walk among the mountains as the equivalent of churchgoing.

Love is a gross exaggeration of the difference between one person and everybody else.

The giving of love is an education in itself.

All women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy. No man does. That’s his.

Love can consign us to hell or to paradise, but it always takes us somewhere.

We really have to understand the person we want to love. If our love is only a will to possess, it is not love. If we only think of ourselves, if we know only our own needs and ignore the needs of the other person, we cannot love.

Only God Himself fully appreciates the influence of a Christian mother in the molding of character in her children.

All the awards in the world, you can get into all the nightclubs, they’ll send you the nicest clothes. Nothing better than walking into your dad’s restaurant and seeing a smile on his face and knowing that your mom and dad and your sister are real proud of you.

This is a moment that I deeply wish my parents could have lived to share. My father would have enjoyed what you have so generously said of me-and my mother would have believed it.

Different taste in jokes is a great strain on the affections.

Never forget the three powerful resources you always have available to you: love, prayer, and forgiveness.

It has been hard for me to find it, but I have found love.

People are like dirt. They can either nourish you and help you grow as a person or they can stunt your growth and make you wilt and die.

The only big things I’ve purchased are my dad’s heart valve and a Rolls-Royce for my parents, for their anniversary. And that was only because my dad had a Lady Gaga license plate on our old car and it was making me crazy because he was getting followed everywhere, so I bought him a new car.

We are not actually equal – humanity – if we are not allowed to freely love one another.

My goal is just to be respected as a man when I walk down the street with my family. I don’t care what your job is, you’re not gonna talk down to me, you’re not gonna try to get a rise out of me. I’m a man first. And in establishing that, some interesting things have happened.

You know what, I’m very attracted to someone who makes me laugh and is that charming. Really, I could be charmed by anyone. I’m just a sucker for somebody that is charming.

I love the sea.

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

May I kiss you then? On this miserable paper? I might as well open the window and kiss the night air.

Consider the fellow. He never spends his time telling you about his previous night’s date. You get the idea he has eyes only for you and wouldn’t think of looking at another woman.

It is necessary to fall in love… if only to provide an alibi for all the random despair you are going to feel anyway.

Behind every successful man is a woman, behind her is his wife.

A mother takes twenty years to make a man of her boy, and another woman makes a fool of him in twenty minutes.

A woman is the only thing I am afraid of that I know will not hurt me.

It is the most sensual men who need to flee women and torment their bodies.

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.

It is far better to be alone, than to be in bad company.

Marriage is like putting your hand into a bag of snakes in the hope of pulling out an eel.

Only on paper has humanity yet achieved glory, beauty, truth, knowledge, virtue, and abiding love.

Heavenly Father loves every one of His children. After all, He is their Father.

Love always brings difficulties, that is true, but the good side of it is that it gives energy.

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.

I was nauseous and tingly all over. I was either in love or I had smallpox.

God is more interested in your future and your relationships than you are.

All parents are concerned about their children’s well-being. As a parent of three kids, I’m very concerned about their well-being.

To feel not only submitted but willing to be anything or nothing as the Lord wills it – this is, in truth, to sing a song to our Well Beloved.

Women. They are a complete mystery.

My father, who was jailed for stealing on more than one occasion, just abandoned his fatherly responsibilities and disappeared. I grew up working from the time I was nine years of age. Money was a big issue everywhere I lived.

Crazy players love me. I don’t know why.

Ah, women. They make the highs higher and the lows more frequent.

It is good to realize that if love and peace can prevail on earth, and if we can teach our children to honor nature’s gifts, the joys and beauties of the outdoors will be here forever.

Know your worth! People always act like they’re doing more for you than you’re doing for them.

It’s not proper for the government to intrude too thoroughly into the domain of the family. It’s inappropriate.

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

Often we can help each other most by leaving each other alone; at other times we need the hand-grasp and the word of cheer.

I was 14, and I fell in love with Pink Floyd.

I used to take my short stories to girls‘ homes and read them to them. Can you imagine the reaction reading a short story to a girl instead of pawing her?

My mother and my father have been married 50 years, and he’s just started to understand that something’s wrong with the system. He accepted the whole thing, you see. Yet this industrious kind of engagement didn’t bring him the success, according to American terms, that he wanted. I was probably affected by this very much. In fact, I know I was.