The kids are a big part of my schedule.

When I was growing up, there was nobody in my family – not even my mother – who I could look to and be like, ‚I know you’ve never said anything homophobic.‘ So, you know, you worry about people in the business who you’ve heard talk that way. Some of my heroes coming up talk recklessly like that.

My mother was a full-time mother. She didn’t have much of her own career, her own life, her own experiences… everything was for her children. I will never be as good a mother as she was. She was just grace incarnate. She was the most generous, loving – she’s better than me.

You can never really live anyone else’s life, not even your child’s. The influence you exert is through your own life, and what you’ve become yourself.

I realize I don’t do a very good job in keeping up to date, but I try to.

I love being American, and I love family. I love having a family, and I feel so blessed, and I feel like God gave me exactly what I wanted, so now I have to do the right thing in God’s eyes also. Just follow what God wants me to do.

To build may have to be the slow and laborious task of years. To destroy can be the thoughtless act of a single day.

It was a privilege to pray with Governor Romney – for his family and our country.

Who in their infinite wisdom decreed that Little League uniforms be white? Certainly not a mother.

I don’t even call them fans. I don’t like that. They’re literally just a part of my life; they’re a part of my family. I don’t think of them as on a lower level than me. I don’t think I’m anything but equal to all of them. So yeah, they’re basically all of my siblings.

I’ve always felt heroic about my life… As a child, I remember little girls in the playground moaning about how boys could do more than they could. I didn’t think that was the case at all. My parents didn’t treat me as a girl.

It is extremely difficult to say how long the process actually took to finally achieve my fragrance, Boudoir, because there was a lot of time waiting around for other people.

Never fret for an only son, the idea of failure will never occur to him.

I never look at my watch when I’m sketching!

Marriage and family are ordained of God. The family is the most important social unit in time and in eternity. Under God’s great plan of happiness, families can be sealed in temples and be prepared to return to dwell in His holy presence forever. That is eternal life!

About the time we can make the ends meet, somebody moves the ends.

If you cannot get rid of the family skeleton, you may as well make it dance.

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

My grandmother took me to church on Sunday all day long, every Sunday into the night. Then Monday evening was the missionary meeting. Tuesday evening was usher board meeting. Wednesday evening was prayer meeting. Thursday evening was visit the sick. Friday evening was choir practice. I mean, and at all those gatherings, we sang.

I do not like broccoli. And I haven’t liked it since I was a little kid and my mother made me eat it. And I’m President of the United States and I’m not going to eat any more broccoli.

Plan your work for today and every day, then work your plan.

As a father, I always want my son to be perfect. When he was young, I tried to train him in martial arts, but he said, ‚I don’t want to become like Bruce Lee’s son, with everybody telling me how good my father was.‘ I just think my son is too lazy.

We all knew this. We all knew that it would take more time than any of us want to dig ourselves out of this hole created by this economic crisis.

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.

I explain the law of compensation like this: ‚Returns are minimal in spite of massive effort at the start, yet returns can be massive with minimal effort over time.

And I come here as a daughter, raised on the South Side of Chicago – by a father who was a blue-collar city worker and a mother who stayed at home with my brother and me.

If I was to go to sleep before midnight, I would feel weird about myself, like I wasted a day. My most productive hours are between midnight and five.

I have a son, who is my heart. A wonderful young man, daring and loving and strong and kind.

It takes three to make a child.

We need to do a better job of putting ourselves higher on our own ‚to do‘ list.

No matter what, I always make it home for Christmas. I love to go to my Tennessee Mountain Home and invite all of my nieces and nephews and their spouses and kids and do what we all like to do – eat, laugh, trade presents and just enjoy each other… and sometimes I even dress up like Santa Claus!

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.

I like to talk about my obsession with french fries because I don’t want people to think that ‚Let’s Move‘ is about complete, utter deprivation. It’s about moderation and real-life changes and ideas that really work for families.

Every man needs slaves like he needs clean air. To rule is to breathe, is it not? And even the most disenfranchised get to breathe. The lowest on the social scale have their spouses or their children.

Lost time is never found again.

Anticipate the difficult by managing the easy.

As I get older, I tend to put more into family than I used to.

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.

There are only two lasting bequests we can hope to give our children. One of these is roots, the other, wings.

The greatest legacy one can pass on to one’s children and grandchildren is not money or other material things accumulated in one’s life, but rather a legacy of character and faith.

I’m focusing on me. I’m focusing on my family’s security, my family’s financial security, so that’s all I can do.

I’ve been my mom’s kitchen helper since I was a little kid.

Sisters are brittle things. God was penurious with me, which makes me shrewd with Him. One is a dainty sum! One bird, one cage, one flight; one song in those far woods, as yet suspected by faith only!

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.

When there’s so much left to do, why spend your time focusing on things you’ve already done, counting trophies or telling stories about the good old days?

I think any activity you have your kids in, you’re all trying to live vicariously through them. And you’re jealous of the kid that’s naturally more talented or has the facility, the body, the genes, or the God-given talent. People get jealous of that.

My momma didn’t clean up floors so I could be a thug… so I could wear my pants down.

America is the student who defies the odds to become the first in a family to go to college – the citizen who defies the cynics and goes out there and votes – the young person who comes out of the shadows to demand the right to dream. That’s what America is about.

I didn’t have any children of my own.

Many people take no care of their money till they come nearly to the end of it, and others do just the same with their time.

My family, frankly, they weren’t folks who went to church every week. My mother was one of the most spiritual people I knew but she didn’t raise me in the church, so I came to my Christian faith later in life and it was because the precepts of Jesus Christ spoke to me in terms of the kind of life that I would want to lead.

I love everything about my job, except being away from the kids.

In our home there was always prayer – aloud, proud and unapologetic.

I would love to continue in music, with writing… but I am not the kind of person who will hang around if I start to become irrelevant. If that happens, I will bow down gracefully, raise my kids, and have a garden. And I am going to let my hair go gray when I am older. I don’t need to be blonde when I’m 60!

My mother fought cancer for almost a decade and died at 56. She held out long enough to meet the first of her grandchildren and to hold them in her arms. But my other children will never have the chance to know her and experience how loving and gracious she was.

I was kind of secretly hoping one of my kids would go out and make a million bucks. So when they put me in a home, at least I’ll have a window with a view.

In general my children refuse to eat anything that hasn’t danced in television.

I don’t travel with them, but they can’t be missing in my home. There have to always be dominoes… I used to play with my family – dad, my grandpa, my uncles.

It is even better to act quickly and err than to hesitate until the time of action is past.

I don’t let a lot of reporters meet my children.

Surely a long life must be somewhat tedious, since we are forced to call in so many trifling things to help rid us of our time, which will never return.