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

Give a little love to a child, and you get a great deal back.

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

My dad had a church of 90 people when I was born. It was just, over the years it continued to grow.

Like every parent, when you start your family, your life completely changes. And you completely live for someone else. I find that the most extraordinary thing. Your life is handed over to someone else. From that moment on, they come first in every choice you make. It’s the most wonderful thing.

The family is the test of freedom; because the family is the only thing that the free man makes for himself and by himself.

Children make your life important.

I was offered a job on Wall Street by my uncle. But I wanted to get out. Make-it-on-my-own kinda thing.

Historically, the family has played the primary role in educating children for life, with the school providing supplemental scaffolding to the family.

Pfft, I hate Christmas Day. It’s for children and families. Not for people like me.

You know, my family and friends have never been yes-men: ‚Yes, you’re doing the right thing, you’re always right.‘ No, they tell me when I’m wrong, and that’s why I’ve been able to stay who I am and stay humble.

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

As apostles and prophets, we are concerned not only for our children and grandchildren but for yours as well – and for each of God’s children.

Train up a child in the way that he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it.

I’ve lost both parents in the last two years, so you pick up on that stuff. 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.

My family wasn’t rich, so when it comes to money, I tend to think, ‚Err on the side of caution.‘

When I’m around the kids I feel like I act the most grown-up just because you’re supposed to. And I say things, like every other day, that remind me of my own parents.

I’m gonna go hard no matter what because I gotta feed my family, and I gotta feed myself.

And so our mothers and grandmothers have, more often than not anonymously, handed on the creative spark, the seed of the flower they themselves never hoped to see – or like a sealed letter they could not plainly read.

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

I have a family, loving aunts, and a good home. No, on the surface I seem to have everything except my one true friend. All I think about when I’m with friends is having a good time. I can’t bring myself to talk about anything but ordinary everyday things. We don’t seem to be able to get any closer, and that’s the problem.

I know I’m talented, but I wasn’t put here to sing. I was put here to be a wife and a mom and look after my family. I love what I do, but it’s not where it begins and ends.

I always wanted a family.

I like to think my dad was easygoing and kind, and I think some of those things have been passed down. I am like him in a sense of being positive and hopeful. He was compassionate, and I’ve got a lot of that in me as well.

My father had died, and very swiftly, too, of cancer of the esophagus. He was 79. I am 61. In whatever kind of a ‚race‘ life may be, I have very abruptly become a finalist.

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.

Just got back from a pleasure trip: I took my mother-in-law to the airport.

My family has very strong women. My mother never laughed at my dream of Africa, even though everyone else did because we didn’t have any money, because Africa was the ‚dark continent‘, and because I was a girl.

My father used to wear the same pants for like a week.

I think about my own sons and my own daughters, and I’m sure that many parents are concerned about what their children are exposed to.

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

Food is everything we are. It’s an extension of nationalist feeling, ethnic feeling, your personal history, your province, your region, your tribe, your grandma. It’s inseparable from those from the get-go.

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?

Family quarrels are bitter things. They don’t go according to any rules. They’re not like aches or wounds, they’re more like splits in the skin that won’t heal because there’s not enough material.

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.

I come from a family where gravy is considered a beverage.

Mother is the name for God in the lips and hearts of little children.

When I’m writing, I don’t feel neurotic. So it’s better for the family if I’m working.

I’m touring the world, not doing nothing against the law, getting money to feed my family. I got employees that have felonies, and they can’t get jobs. They work for me.

The ‚Billionaire‘ song is what my kids tease me with. They sing it to me. It’s funny.

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.

With all the… success that I’ve been lucky enough to get? That doesn’t happen unless the home life is solid.

I have a lot of other stuff to accomplish before I get to kids. Whenever the time is right, I’ll just know. If I had a girl, she’d probably be really rebellious. She would be like a bundle of karma. I would love to bring them up in Barbados.

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

My parents weren’t actors or studio executives.

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

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

Is solace anywhere more comforting than that in the arms of a sister.

All my stepchildren carried the burden of my fame. Sometimes they would read terrible things about me, and I’d worry about whether it would hurt them. I would tell them: ‚Don’t hide these things from me. I’d rather you ask me these things straight out, and I’ll answer all your questions.‘

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.

We will invest in our people, quality education, job opportunity, family, neighborhood, and yes, a thing we call America.

Like all the best families, we have our share of eccentricities, of impetuous and wayward youngsters and of family disagreements.

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

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.

I feel only my friends and family need to know what is happening in my personal life.

I was very blessed to have family and friends, but particularly family, who told me I was not only all right, I was just right, so I believe that my brain is a good one, and it’s lasting me very well.

Every man sees in his relatives, and especially in his cousins, a series of grotesque caricatures of himself.

I’ve been through natural disasters. I lived down in Miami and was down there for Hurricane Andrew which was a Category 5. There were members of my family that thought they were going to die. Everyone was in the bathtub.

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.

I used to carry my father’s Bible and put it on the pulpit so he could preach.