Returning to your family and where you came from, and your history… this is what makes you strong. It’s not looking out that’s going to do that – it’s looking in.

Treat your kid like a darling for the first five years. For the next five years, scold them. By the time they turn sixteen, treat them like a friend. Your grown up children are your best friends.

It is totally different making films in the East than in the West. In the East, I make my own Jackie Chan films, and it’s like my family. Sometimes I pick up the camera because I choreograph all the fighting scenes, even when I’m not fighting. I don’t have my own chair. I just sit on the set with everybody.

My father was a mean, controlling and manipulative person for most of his life. He was unpredictable and unstable.

He who knows himself is enlightened.

If you haven’t forgiven yourself something, how can you forgive others.

I went through a period when I felt my film characters were having more fun than I was. It might partly explain why I ended up tattooed or doing certain extreme things in my life.

As a kid, I’d go into the bathroom when I was having a tantrum. I’d be in the bathroom crying, studying myself in the mirror. I was preparing for future roles.

I tended to place my wife under a pedestal.

The former colonies, in Latin America in particular, have a better chance than ever before to overcome centuries of subjugation, violence and foreign intervention, which they have so far survived as dependencies with islands of luxury in a sea of misery.

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.

Most of my young years were spent under the boots of the military.

I fear that too many have sadly surrendered their agency to the adversary and are saying by their conduct, ‚I care more about satisfying my own desires than I do about bearing the Savior’s power to bless others.‘

I wanted to be a skinny little ballerina but I was a voluptuous little Italian girl whose dad had meatballs on the table every night.

I am more afraid of my own heart than of the pope and all his cardinals. I have within me the great pope, Self.

Remembering what you’ve been through and how that has strengthened your mindset can lift you out of a negative brain loop and help you bypass those weak, one-second impulses to give in. Even if you’re feeling low and beat down by life right now, I guarantee you can think of a time or two when you overcame odds and tasted success.

Don’t be afraid to see what you see.

I didn’t try to copy my dad or fit into the pressure or the mold that everybody tried to make me fit into.

President Obama seems completely unaware of how many of the policies he is trying to impose have been tried before, in many times and places around the world, and have failed time and again.

I don’t do things for the response or for the controversy. I just live my life.

All that is gold does not glitter, not all those who wander are lost; the old that is strong does not wither, deep roots are not reached by the frost.

I know that I’m not the easiest person to live with. The challenge I put on myself is so great that the person I live with feels himself challenged. I bring a lot to bear, and I don’t know how not to.

If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away.

You’re going to go through tough times – that’s life. But I say, ‚Nothing happens to you, it happens for you.‘ See the positive in negative events.

The man of knowledge must be able not only to love his enemies but also to hate his friends.

I like pushing boundaries.

The formation of one’s character ought to be everyone’s chief aim.

The mind of a 19-year-old is very different from the mind of a 26-year-old. You grow. You get into better relationships. You experience more, meet more people, better people. But when you’re in a dark hole at an earlier point in your life – you write about the mindset you’re in at that moment.

It was high counsel that I once heard given to a young person, ‚always do what you are afraid to do.‘

Humble people ask for help.

There are two ways of exerting one’s strength: one is pushing down, the other is pulling up.

I’m just glad I was able to return to some of that innocence and beauty I had as a child when I started my own family, and my children brought me back some of that spirit.

I like the dreams of the future better than the history of the past.

Acting helped me as I was growing up. It helped me learn about myself, helped me travel, helped me understand life, express myself, all those wonderful things. So I’m very, very grateful; it’s a fun job. It’s a luxury.

Well, there are some things that I just can’t get out of my head, and they start to annoy me after a while. Sometimes they’re of my own creation, as well – and they’re just as annoying. It’s not only other people’s ear worms that bug me, it’s my own, as well.

Books can only reveal us to ourselves, and as often as they do us this service we lay them aside.

If you would lift me up you must be on higher ground.

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.

I think I lived those years very impersonally. It was almost as though I had erected someone outside myself who was the president’s wife. I was lost somewhere deep down inside myself. That is the way I felt and worked until I left the White House.

The chains of habit are too weak to be felt until they are too strong to be broken.

People who work for me know that family comes first. And I’m fortunate to have a family that is very supportive of the work I do, so I don’t have to live two separate lives.

What I admire most about Hillary is that she never buckles under pressure. She never takes the easy way out. And Hillary Clinton has never quit on anything in her life.

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.

Shallow men believe in luck. Strong men believe in cause and effect.

For the record, our democracy is revered around the world. And free elections are the best way on Earth to choose our leaders. This is how we elected John F. Kennedy; Ronald Reagan; two George Bushes; Bill Clinton; and Barack Obama. It has worked for decades.

I was so ashamed of who I was.

In a controversy the instant we feel anger we have already ceased striving for the truth, and have begun striving for ourselves.

We have to confront ourselves. Do we like what we see in the mirror? And, according to our light, according to our understanding, according to our courage, we will have to say yea or nay – and rise!

If my mother knew I did this for a living, she’d kill me. She thinks I’m selling dope.

Teach me to feel another’s woe, to hide the fault I see, that mercy I to others show, that mercy show to me.

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.

Assassination has never changed the history of the world.

Not everyone loves me, but I have to be okay no matter what they think about me.

Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear, not absence of fear.

I’ve been interested in Japan since the 1930s, when I read about Japan’s vicious crimes in Manchuria and China.

I can imagine it’s hard to make a relationship last. I wouldn’t know.

Life is not accumulation, it is about contribution.

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

I had a lot of resistance, and not just to fame. I was always conscious of not changing.

Listening to and understanding our inner sufferings will resolve most of the problems we encounter.

When I was young, I could not imagine being old. My mother said, and the doctor confirmed, that I had an unusual amount of energy; and it followed me into young adulthood.