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

I used to really love Fiend, but he stopped. He just stopped. Every time he had a project, every project – ‚There’s One In Every Family,‘ ‚Street Life‘ – I had to have them. And he just stopped. And that was disappointing, ‚cause that was my favorite rapper at one time.

I have worked hard since my childhood and worked as a labourer. I put my mind and heart into it.

I have a very good family. I’m very fortunate to have a very good family. I believe very strongly in the family. It’s one of the things we have in our platform, is to talk about it.

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

You bring children into the world. You love them with heart and soul.

A man always remembers his first love with special tenderness, but after that he begins to bunch them.

I’ve had no contact with my daughter for years. That’s her choice. Anyway, you move on. If people don’t want to bother with me, fine. You know, God bless them, and move on.

A hundred struggle and drown in the breakers. One discovers the new world. But rather, ten times rather, die in the surf, heralding the way to that new world, than stand idly on the shore.

We believe that every single child has boundless promise, no matter who they are, where they come from, or how much money their parents have. We’ve got to remember that. We believe that each of these young people is a vital part of the great American story.

Memory… is the diary that we all carry about with us.

It is easy to say how we love new friends, and what we think of them, but words can never trace out all the fibers that knit us to the old.

When I was a child I asked my mother what homosexuality was about and she said – and this was 100 years ago in Germany and she was very open-minded – ‚It’s like hair color. It’s nothing. Some people are blond and some people have dark hair. It’s not a subject.‘ This was a very healthy attitude.

Sometimes you can’t prioritise family and you feel guilty.

There is nothing like returning to a place that remains unchanged to find the ways in which you yourself have altered.

Since the departure of good old-fashioned entertainers the re-emergence of somebody who wants to be an entertainer has unfortunately become a synonym for camp. I don’t think I’m camper than any other person who felt at home on stage, and felt more at home on stage than he did offstage.

My grandfather was smart and had a whole lot of pride. He didn’t speak a terrible amount, but you could tell there was a ton on his mind – like a quiet acceptance of how life had turned out.

My family was a poor farming family, and we lived under absolute segregation.

One thing they never tell you about child raising is that for the rest of your life, at the drop of a hat, you are expected to know your child’s name and how old he or she is.

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.

The schools ain’t what they used to be and never was.

I never smoked a cigarette until I was nine.

Any man who doesn’t love his mama can’t be no friend of mine.

What really motivates people at Facebook is building something that’s worthwhile, that they’re going to be proud to show to friends and family.

I grew up listening to the Police, I grew up performing in bars, singing Police songs.

My mom’s one of 13 siblings, and they all got six kids, and till I was 13 everybody was in Compton.

When I was young, poverty was so common that we didn’t know it had a name.

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

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 never dreamed of being a pop star when I was a child.

I’ve told Billy if I ever caught him cheating, I wouldn’t kill him because I love his children and they need a dad. But I would beat him up. I know where all of his sports injuries are.

It’s true; once you are a father, there’s no turning back. Your heart strings as well as your purse strings are never again the same.

Growing up I didn’t watch movies.

‚Lives‘ is one of those books I should really have written when I was younger. It is the classic childhood, adolescence, breakthrough-into-maturity book. Every beginning writer has that material – and after that, you’re not sure what you can do.

All men are children, and of one family. The same tale sends them all to bed, and wakes them in the morning.

I still close my eyes and go home – I can always draw from that.

The great thing about having a bunch of kids is they just remind you that you’re the person who takes them to go poop!

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.

Probably because I’m from a middle class family, I have that nature in me that I don’t get too excited with big things.

I remember when my mother, Shyamala Harris, bought our first home. I was thirteen. She was so proud, and my sister and I were so excited. Millions of Americans know that feeling of walking through the front door of their own home for the first time – the feeling of reaching for opportunity and finding it.

It’s still scary every time I go back to the past. Each morning, my heart catches. When I get there, I remember how the light was, where the draft was coming from, what odors were in the air. When I write, I get all the weeping out.

Like all great travellers, I have seen more than I remember, and remember more than I have seen.

I grew up in a musical family; the majority of my growing up was done in Hawaii. It’s what we do. You sing, you dance, you play ukulele and you drink.

When I was a little girl, I always dreamed of being a star. I didn’t really know what all that meant. I didn’t know.

For me, it’s about the way I carry myself and the way I treat other people. My relationship and how I feel about God and what He does for me, is something deeply personal. It’s where I came from, my family, I was brought up in a religious household and that’s very important to me.

As a kid, I got three meals a day. Oatmeal, miss-a-meal and no meal.

I’m attracted to women who are smart and funny and ambitious and have lives of their own and great families. Isn’t that what attracts anyone?

George Carlin’s album, ‚Class Clown,‘ came out when I was in high school. I memorized a lot of that album. I’d come home from school, put it on, and listen over and over. I started memorizing it. I don’t even know why. I loved it so much I memorized it.

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.

Every generation always thinks it was better before, and I think people have been saying this for probably thousands of years.

Only God Himself fully appreciates the influence of a Christian mother in the molding of character in her children.

A mother defends herself with a heart filled with love before doing so with words. I wonder whether there is any love for the church in the hearts of those who pay so much attention to the scandals.

I always thought money was something just to make me happy. But I’ve learned that I feel better being able to help my folks, ‚cause we never had nothing. So just to see them excited about my career is more of a blessing than me actually having it for myself.

Sixth grade was a big time, in my childhood, of hoops and friendship, and coming up with funny things.

I was reared in the church, in the Presbyterian Church.

When I was growing up, I wasn’t an extrovert. If anything, I was an introverted kid and a very average pupil at school. I was very quiet.

I never listen to ‚Nevermind.‘ I haven’t listened to it since we put it out. That says something.

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.

God’s dream is that you and I and all of us will realize that we are family, that we are made for togetherness, for goodness, and for compassion.

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.

When it comes down to it, glam rock was all very amusing. At the time, it was funny, then a few years later it became sort of serious-looking and a bit foreboding.