My mother fought cancer for almost a decade and died at 56. She held out long enough to meet the first of her grandchildren and to hold them in her arms. But my other children will never have the chance to know her and experience how loving and gracious she was.

There’s nothing better than having a baby. I’ve always loved children. I used to work summers at the YMCA and be in charge of, like, 30 preschool kids. I knew that when I had a child, I’d be overwhelmed, and it’s true… I can’t tell you how much my attitude has changed since we’ve got Frances. Holding my baby is the best drug in the world.

In the real world, children love me.

Deceiving others. That is what the world calls a romance.

If the American people don’t love me, their descendants will.

There is always some madness in love. But there is also always some reason in madness.

The heart is forever inexperienced.

A house divided against itself cannot stand.

Counsel with your parents is a privilege at any age.

We never love a person, but only qualities.

If someone is right for you, you’ll know it.

Experience acquired in the heroic battle against Batista’s tyranny showed that the enemy, no matter what his strength, could not defeat the Cuban people.

They do not love that do not show their love.

Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experience of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, ambition inspired, and success achieved.

Every bit of me is devoted to love and art. And I aspire to try to be a teacher to my young fans who feel just like I felt when I was younger. I just felt like a freak. I guess what I’m trying to say is I’m trying to liberate them, I want to free them of their fears and make them feel that they can make their own space in the world.

We can continue to learn generation after generation and now is time to begin to learn how to love in a non-discriminatory way because we are intelligent enough, but we are not loving enough as a species.

Intense love does not measure, it just gives.

The best way to know God is to love many things.

Only in the agony of parting do we look into the depths of love.

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

I’ve learned a lot since I was a new mother. My approach to struggle and shame now is to talk to yourself like you’d talk to someone you love and reach out to tell your story.

‚Tis best to weigh the enemy more mighty than he seems.

If you like it you should enjoy it! Moderation in everything. If there’s things you really love, you should enjoy. You get one life, so you should enjoy it.

To love is so startling it leaves little time for anything else.

Love is easy, and I love writing. You can’t resist love. You get an idea, someone says something, and you’re in love.

The key to winning is choosing to do God’s will and loving others with all you’ve got.

I like criticism. It makes you strong.

Marriage is the most natural state of man, and… the state in which you will find solid happiness.

Blessed is the influence of one true, loving human soul on another.

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.

‚Love Story‘ is actually about a guy that I almost dated. But when I introduced him to my family and my friends, they all said they didn’t like him. All of them!

My sorrow, when she’s here with me, thinks these dark days of autumn rain are beautiful as days can be; she loves the bare, the withered tree; she walks the sodden pasture lane.

For me to talk with Obama and the conversation I had with him, I was letting him know that me and my fans have a special connection, and it’s love, and I believe that love is the answer.

I don’t keep people around me that aren’t family. You don’t get to stay. Unless you’re eating at the table with us, you’re not part. We eat together, we cry together, we live together, we die together. Everything that we do is for each other, and we care for another.

People who think you could wave a magic wand and the legacy of the past will be over are blind.

I know why we’re strong. I know why we have held together; I know why we are united: it’s because there’s always been a growing middle class.

Love is an interesting thing.

Strength and growth come only through continuous effort and struggle.

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

My mother raised me with God. We were poor financially, but we were rich spiritually.

Maybe there is no actual place called hell. Maybe hell is just having to listen to our grandparents breathe through their noses when they’re eating sandwiches.

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.

That government is the strongest of which every man feels himself a part.

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.

Do you know what it means to come home at night to a woman who’ll give you a little love, a little affection, a little tenderness? It means you’re in the wrong house, that’s what it means.

Neither of my parents went to church, but they did everything that you needed to do to be Christian. That’s something a Quaker would call an intimation of the divine.

If you are not too long, I will wait here for you all my life.

If I love you, what business is it of yours?

Letters are among the most significant memorial a person can leave behind them.

I can be almost terminally grief-stricken because things are so dire, but at the same time, there’s a real lightheartedness about just the recoverability of life, of how things change, how they’re not the same, ever again.

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

Great grief does not of itself put an end to itself.

Whenever something went wrong when I was young – if I had a pimple or if my hair broke – my mom would say, ‚Sister mine, I’m going to make you some soup.‘ And I really thought the soup would make my pimple go away or my hair stronger.

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

To every soul that knows how to pray, to every soul that by faith comes to Jesus, the true mercy seat, divine sovereignty wears no dark and terrible aspect but is full of love.

Together, we can help make sure that every family that walks into a restaurant can make an easy, healthy choice.

Whether I’m running on the beach without my shirt or whether I’m going out with my kids or going to church or going out to dinner – I don’t choose to insulate myself in engaging in real life. Hence, the public kind of almost knows me as much through my real life that they see through the rag mags.

Compton got such a legacy in hip-hop.

Until I feared I would lose it, I never loved to read. One does not love breathing.

Two such as you with such a master speed, cannot be parted nor be swept away, from one another once you are agreed, that life is only life forevermore, together wing to wing and oar to oar.

My parents are my backbone. Still are. They’re the only group that will support you if you score zero or you score 40.