My parents were both storytellers. They always spoke with metaphorical richness.

When I was kidnapped, my parents snapped into action. They rented out my room.

I have loved to cook since I was a child in my mother’s kitchen. If I don’t have time to cook, I’ll just read a cookbook.

My mother was Catholic, my father was Protestant. There was always a debate going on at home – I think in those days we called them arguments – about who was right and who was wrong.

Of all the subjects on this planet, I think my parents would have been hard put to name one less useful than Greek mythology to securing the keys to an executive bathroom.

I used to live with my grandmother. I used to wonder why the other kids in school went home with their mothers and fathers. I wanted to be the guy that got married. I wanted to be the guy with the children and the white picket fence. I never had that.

Christmas means a great deal to me. I was reared in a family that celebrated Christmas to some extent, but I married into a family that celebrated Christmas in a big way. And my wife always made a big thing of Christmas for the children. We have five children, and we had a terrific time at Christmas.

In this country, it doesn’t make any difference where you were born. It doesn’t make any difference who your parents were. It doesn’t make any difference if, like me, you couldn’t even speak English until you were in your twenties.

I was a super-duper Tupac fan, and I realized later, when I became a huge Nas fan and a huge Eminem fan, I was drawn to the storytellers. They all told stories in different ways, but they were all like the best storytellers.

All that the future holds in store for each sacred child of God will be shaped by his or her parents, family, friends, and teachers. Thus, our faith now becomes part of our posterity’s faith later.

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.

However my parents – both of whom came from impoverished backgrounds and neither of whom had been to college, took the view that my overactive imagination was an amusing quirk that would never pay a mortgage or secure a pension.

Sometimes a nickname is used instead of the real name. But a nickname may offend either the one named or the parents who gave the name.

You think I’m going to ask these sweet 14 year olds to ask their parents to buy a $100 ticket then run around in latex and lip sync? No way.

Preparation for a mission is important. A mission is a voluntary act of service to God and humankind. Missionaries support that privilege with their personal savings. Parents, families, friends, and donors to the General Missionary Fund may also assist.

We believed in our idea – a family park where parents and children could have fun- together.

Whenever a youth is ascertained to possess talents meriting an education which his parents cannot afford, he should be carried forward at the public expense.

A man’s character may be learned from the adjectives which he habitually uses in conversation.

It’s very hard for our parents who see us enter a world that they can’t imagine.

I grew up cursing a lot. It felt natural. My parents told me to stop.

When I first saw a picture of the crucifixion, I lost respect for my parents. I suddenly realised that this is what the adult world is like – full of cruelty and hypocrisy.

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

My mami and papi love my music. They’re always listening to the radio waiting for one of my songs to come on. And when it does, they turn up the volume – and turn it back down when it’s over.

Call me Jonah. My parents did, or nearly did. They called me John.

Because of my parents‘ love of democracy, we came to America after being driven twice from our home in Czechoslovakia – first by Hitler and then by Stalin.

My parents were both born in Virginia, of undistinguished families – second families, perhaps I should say.

You don’t have to deserve your mother’s love. You have to deserve your father’s.

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

When I was growing up, my parents were almost involved in various volunteer things. My dad was head of Planned Parenthood. And it was very controversial to be involved with that.

It is time for parents to teach young people early on that in diversity there is beauty and there is strength.

When I was younger we had a grape arbor, and my mom would go out and pick grapes and make grape jam in the sink – boil it, put it in jars, and give it away as gifts.

My parents met when they were graduate students at UC Berkeley in the 1960s. They were both active in the civil-rights movement.

When my first semester grades came out, my mom and dad told me I wouldn’t be playing football.

I was fortunate and I was lucky that I had a couple of people in my life who cared about me. I had good, loving parents.

Children begin by loving their parents; after a time they judge them; rarely, if ever, do they forgive them.

My biological mother later found out that my mother had never graduated from college and that my father had never graduated from high school. She refused to sign the final adoption papers. She only relented a few months later when my parents promised that I would someday go to college.

Counsel with your parents is a privilege at any age.

K to 12 is partly about babysitting the kids so the parents can do other things.

My whole family are hams. They’re storytellers and everyone outdoes the next one.

My mom and my dad were both very sociable, meeting lots of interesting people.

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

I’ve always been surrounded by many great people and professors, but my family, especially my mom who was a teacher, was the person who encouraged me to study and pushed me to continue. When we’re young, we don’t understand why our parents bug us so much with school and doing homework, but it’s a blessing to have that support at home.

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

My parents were of the generation who thought they were the children of a free Czechoslovakia, the only democracy in central Europe.

Surely wisdom will come as we listen to learn from children, parents, partners, neighbors, Church leaders, and the Lord.

I believe that my parents did wonderful things for us.

My parents weren’t actors or studio executives.

My parents didn’t want to move to Florida, but they turned sixty and that’s the law.

The tradition of the South is not urban… I think we are a region of storytellers, naturally, just from our tribal instincts. We did not have the pleasures of the theater or the dance, motion pictures when they came along. We simply entertain each other by talking.

I guess you could say I devoted myself so strongly to my music that for awhile I forgot about my family. But I only get one set of parents, and I think I forgot about that for a little while.

My mother never cursed at home; my father never cursed at home. My father didn’t drink. Even though we were poor, we would say a blessing over the table. So that’s who I am.

When I moved out, my mom and dad came to help me get settled into my apartment – a place I ultimately got hooked up with in Coach Nelson’s building. We had to figure out how to get all my shoes over here. That was a little stressful.

Parents and teachers, learn to listen, then listen to learn from children.

I knew I was blessed with a gift of having both parents.

A Sunday school is a prison in which children do penance for the evil conscience of their parents.

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.

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

I don’t believe in nepotism. I don’t much like the idea of parents who interfere.