My mom was a terrible parent of young children. And thank God – I thank God every time I think of it – I was sent to my paternal grandmother. Ah, but my mother was a great parent of a young adult.

When I was 8, I thought I was Harrison Ford, Gene Wilder, Richard Pryor, Elvis, and Chuck Norris all at once.

I know that when I pray, something wonderful happens. Not just to the person or persons for whom I’m praying, but also something wonderful happens to me. I’m grateful that I’m heard.

When I was younger I could remember anything, whether it happened or not.

The U.S.S. George H. W. Bush is a great thing in my life. It’s amazing. A great honor.

But, you know, you can’t be a star at home.

Remember that the happiest people are not those getting more, but those giving more.

Thanks to my mother, not a single cardboard box has found its way back into society. We receive gifts in boxes from stores that went out of business twenty years ago.

Children make your life important.

I do have a lot of gays in my family now, but some will never come out.

I never thought I’d have children; I never thought I’d be in love, I never thought I’d meet the right person. Having come from a broken home – you kind of accept that certain things feel like a fairy tale, and you just don’t look for them.

Live so that when your children think of fairness, caring, and integrity, they think of you.

I didn’t go to school for a full year until I was 12. In the summer I was a wild child in the woods, with no shoes, and in the fall it was back to the city, shoe shops and school.

I was born in a very poor family. I used to sell tea in a railway coach as a child. My mother used to wash utensils and do lowly household work in the houses of others to earn a livelihood. I have seen poverty very closely. I have lived in poverty. As a child, my entire childhood was steeped in poverty.

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

Children, I mean, think of your own childhood, how important the bedtime story was. How important these imaginary experiences were for you. They helped shape reality, and I think human beings wouldn’t be human without narrative fiction.

That summer after the draft was probably the most fun I’ve ever had, because all I had to do every day was wake up and go work out for four or five hours. I got to play some golf, which I love to do, too, and then got to hang out with my family.

The problem with me, as far as getting married and having a family, is that my comedy is so important to me. So I don’t know if I’ll ever be as good a dad as my dad.

My parents taught me service – not by saying, but by doing. That was my culture, the culture of my family.

What it’s like to be me? You know, it’s good to be me. My life is good.

If I could have worked from the time I was born until I was 18 and never had to work again, I would have done it.

My own eight children all march to the beat of their inner music, and in some cases, it is definitely far away from what I hear. I’ve had to honor their instincts and their choices, and merely guided them out of harm’s way until they could be their own guides.

When someone bestows something on you, no matter how true it is, when someone says, ‚Sexiest Man Alive,‘ I’m honestly going, ‚Thank you. Right on.‘ For me, it’s never canceled out anything, it’s never made me go, ‚Does this make me less talented of an actor?‘

There’s something wrong with a mother who washes out a measuring cup with soap and water after she’s only measured water in it.

What life half gives a man, posterity gives entirely.

There is a ‚sanctity‘ involved with bringing a child into this world: it is better than bombing one out of it.

I am grateful to be a woman. I must have done something great in another life.

The love of the family, the love of one person can heal. It heals the scars left by a larger society. A massive, powerful society.

There are two ways to live: you can live as if nothing is a miracle; you can live as if everything is a miracle.

Part of our tradition as black women is that we are universalists. Black children, yellow children, red children, brown children, that is the black woman’s normal, day-to-day relationship. In my family alone, we are about four different colors.

Not what we have But what we enjoy, constitutes our abundance.

Being a child at home alone in the summer is a high-risk occupation. If you call your mother at work thirteen times an hour, she can hurt you.

I soothe my conscience now with the thought that it is better for hard words to be on paper than that Mummy should carry them in her heart.

I didn’t know any gay people in my childhood.

It is a wise father that knows his own child.

If you truly get in touch with a piece of carrot, you get in touch with the soil, the rain, the sunshine. You get in touch with Mother Earth and eating in such a way, you feel in touch with true life, your roots, and that is meditation. If we chew every morsel of our food in that way we become grateful and when you are grateful, you are happy.

We don’t thrive on military acts. We do them because we have to, and thank God we are efficient.

You see, at the end of the day, my most important title is still ‚mom-in-chief.‘ My daughters are still the heart of my heart and the center of my world.

Expect nothing. Live frugally on surprise.

Do not spoil what you have by desiring what you have not; remember that what you now have was once among the things you only hoped for.

Legacy is a stupid thing! I don’t want a legacy.

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?

My family is very good about visiting me, and other friends as well.

Who’s my hero? That’s a great question… Well, I think my dad is my hero, because he’s someone I look up to every day.

He has the most who is most content with the least.

My mother was a very natural woman. She never spoiled herself, never wore make-up, and wore modest jewellery, but she always had a few special items for when she wanted to feel like a lady. One of those special items – and I remember it because it seemed so elegant – was her Guerlain powder.

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

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

Many people are alive but don’t touch the miracle of being alive.

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.

Who in their infinite wisdom decreed that Little League uniforms be white? Certainly not a mother.

I learned to walk as a baby, and I haven’t had a lesson since.

Sometimes, when I see my granddaughters make small discoveries of their own, I wish I were a child.

So long as I’m Commander-in-Chief, we will sustain the strongest military the world has ever known. When you take off the uniform, we will serve you as well as you’ve served us – because no one who fights for this country should have to fight for a job, or a roof over their head, or the care that they need when they come home.

I had my first baby at twenty-one.

God is not so wary as we, else He would give us no friends, lest we forget Him! The charms of the heaven in the bush are superseded, I fear, by the heaven in the hand, occasionally.

Once you have six children, you’re committed.

I am proud to have been born in Iowa. Through the eyes of a ten-year-old boy, it was a place of adventure and daily discoveries – the wonder of the growing crops, the excitements of the harvest, the journeys to the woods for nuts and hunting, the joys of snowy winters, the comfort of the family fireside, of good food and tender care.

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

I’m just wanting to make the proper breakfast and keep the house. That’s my passion. At the request of my kids, I’m taking cooking classes. As I go to sleep at night, I think, ‚Did I do a great job as a mom, or was that an average day?‘

I have nothing to ask but that you would remove to the other side, that you may not, by intercepting the sunshine, take from me what you cannot give.