Now that I’m a parent, I understand why my father was in a bad mood a lot.

To be a successful father… there’s one absolute rule: when you have a kid, don’t look at it for the first two years.

If you deny people their own voice, you’ll have no idea of who they were.

I remember thinking quite logically that I didn’t want to spoil my children with wealth and so that I would create a foundation, but not knowing exactly what it would focus on.

Words do not express thoughts very well. They always become a little different immediately after they are expressed, a little distorted, a little foolish.

Your pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses your understanding.

The finest works of art are precious, among other reasons, because they make it possible for us to know, if only imperfectly and for a little while, what it actually feels like to think subtly and feel nobly.

It took Simone a long time to understand why people want Daddy’s autograph. I’d tell her, and my wife would tell her, too, ‚People see Daddy in the movies, and they are excited to meet him.‘ But she couldn’t really grasp it.

Much learning does not teach understanding.

To attain any assured knowledge about the soul is one of the most difficult things in the world.

The reason why men do not obey us, is because they see the mud at the bottom of our eye.

We have to stop and be humble enough to understand that there is something called mystery.

Somewhere it is written that parents who are critical of other people’s children and publicly admit they can do better are asking for it.

I had to make a choice at one point in my life, of missing films or missing my children. It was a very easy decision to make because I missed my children so very much.

Black people comprehend the South. We understand its weight. It has rested on our backs… I knew that my heart would break if ever I put my foot down on that soil, moist, still, with old hurts. I had to face the fear/loathing at its source or it would consume me whole.

I’ve never been a hands-on dad. I’m not ashamed to admit it, but you can’t run a restaurant and be home for tea at 4:30 and bath and change nappies.

An inability to handle language is not the same thing as stupidity.

The only time my records are going to be broken is by my own spawn. I’m going be training that child out the womb.

If I were a woman, I would love to have lots of kids. But for men, I don’t believe in it.

When people get married young, you don’t really understand the true definition of marriage.

A person hears only what they understand.

Real magic in relationships means an absence of judgment of others.

It goes without saying that you should never have more children than you have car windows.

If you’re doing a biography, you try to stay as accurate as possible to reality. But you really don’t know what was going on in the person’s mind. You just know what was going on in the minds of people around him.

When we’re looking for compassion, we need someone who is deeply rooted, is able to bend and, most of all, embraces us for our strengths and struggles.

Culture makes people understand each other better. And if they understand each other better in their soul, it is easier to overcome the economic and political barriers. But first they have to understand that their neighbour is, in the end, just like them, with the same problems, the same questions.

The true triumph of reason is that it enables us to get along with those who do not possess it.

It’s much worse to read criticism about your son than yourself.

We may have our private opinions but why should they be a bar to the meeting of hearts?

I read to my kid, but I can’t stand reading.

My mother was determined to make us independent. When I was four years old, she stopped the car a few miles from our house and made me find my own way home across the fields. I got hopelessly lost.

He who does not understand your silence will probably not understand your words.

I don’t hate women – they just sometimes make me mad.

There are many people in the world who really don’t understand-or say they don’t-what is the great issue between the free world and the Communist world. Let them come to Berlin!

I’m trying to make God more relevant in our society. And I think talking in everyday terms and making sure people can understand it – I think that’s important.

Men who wish to know about the world must learn about it in its particular details.

Understand: any phenomenon in the world is by nature complex. The people you deal with are equally complex. Any action sets off a limitless chain of reactions. It is never so simple as A leads to B. B will lead to C, D and beyond.

Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will.

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

The kids are a big part of my schedule.

The training of children is a profession, where we must know how to waste time in order to save it.

When I understand myself, I understand you, and out of that understanding comes love.

When we talk about understanding, surely it takes place only when the mind listens completely – the mind being your heart, your nerves, your ears – when you give your whole attention to it.

The problem isn’t that Johnny can’t read. The problem isn’t even that Johnny can’t think. The problem is that Johnny doesn’t know what thinking is; he confuses it with feeling.

I would say the most satisfying thing actually is watching my three children each pick up on their own interests and work many more hours per week than most people that have jobs at trying to intelligently give away that money in fields that they particularly care about.

If I walked into the kitchen without washing my hands as a kid, I’d hear a loud ‚A-hem!‘ from my mother or grandmother. Now I count on other people to do the same.

People who know little are usually great talkers, while men who know much say little.

Mum had done everything you need to educate a kid. She made me a kid who likes books and she told me about ‚Wind in the Willows‘ and read it and I thought this is weird, Rat, Mole, Toad and my first ever Bolshie thought – you know about ‚The Wind in the Willows.‘

When we remember we are all mad, the mysteries disappear and life stands explained.

The design of the Mac wasn’t what it looked like, although that was part of it. Primarily, it was how it worked. To design something really well, you have to get it. You have to really grok what it’s all about. It takes a passionate commitment to really thoroughly understand something, chew it up, not just quickly swallow it.

You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth.

A man may imagine things that are false, but he can only understand things that are true, for if the things be false, the apprehension of them is not understanding.

It is not until you become a mother that your judgment slowly turns to compassion and understanding.

Truly fertile Music, the only kind that will move us, that we shall truly appreciate, will be a Music conducive to Dream, which banishes all reason and analysis. One must not wish first to understand and then to feel. Art does not tolerate Reason.

I’ve never understood why people consider youth a time of freedom and joy. It’s probably because they have forgotten their own.

The kids never listen to you, especially the youngest ones.

It is a wise father that knows his own child.

A child of five would understand this. Send someone to fetch a child of five.

My mother, I suppose, is still a main figure in my life because her life was so sad and unfair, and she so brave, but also because she was determined to make me into the Sunday-school-recitation little girl I was, from the age of seven or so, fighting not to be.

The responsibility of tolerance lies with those who have the wider vision.

My elder brothers were all put apprentices to different trades. I was put to the grammar-school at eight years of age, my father intending to devote me, as the tithe of his sons, to the service of the Church.