The side of fairytales I don’t like is that they always have happy endings, that there’s just good and evil, and things are perfect. But life is a little more complicated, and that’s what I try to teach my kids.

I’m dying to be a great dad one day, whenever that day comes.

Life is about conduct and how we conduct ourselves. But two wrongs never make a right.

Mothers are fonder than fathers of their children because they are more certain they are their own.

The unjustifiable severity of a parent is loaded with this aggravation, that those whom he injures are always in his sight.

A child wants things to be a certain way. When you get to be an adult, you just understand that some people are good, some are not, and you can’t be naive.

My mother had a great deal of trouble with me, but I think she enjoyed it.

All things considered, there’s nobody better for children than parents.

Why should anybody be interested in some old man who was a failure?

I didn’t start sweating until I had children. That was one of the first things I realized when my daughter Violet was born – I started getting wicked BO. You know there’s a difference between basketball BO and stress BO? This was definitely stress BO. Like, new dad BO.

If I ever had twins, I’d use one for parts.

As a father and now a grandfather to three wonderful grandchildren, I know how magical the first year of a child’s life is but also how much hard work it takes. Being able to spend as much time as possible with your loved ones is absolutely vital, especially early on.

Any book that helps a child to form a habit of reading, to make reading one of his deep and continuing needs, is good for him.

Running taught me valuable lessons. In cross-country competition, training counted more than intrinsic ability, and I could compensate for a lack of natural aptitude with diligence and discipline. I applied this in everything I did.

I do not think that I am a natural born mother… If I ever wanted to mother anyone, it was my father.

I will say this: one of the things that is a pain when you’re expecting children is how much advice unsolicited people give you when you’re not asking for it.

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.

It is good to realize that if love and peace can prevail on earth, and if we can teach our children to honor nature’s gifts, the joys and beauties of the outdoors will be here forever.

As a matter of self-preservation, a man needs good friends or ardent enemies, for the former instruct him and the latter take him to task.

If a woman can, by careful selection of a father and nourishment of herself, produce a citizen with efficient senses, sound organs and a good digestion, she should clearly be secured a sufficient reward for that natural service to make her willing to undertake and repeat it.

My mom, she was a very, very soft woman. It was hard for her to yell or even curse. But when it came to fighting for her kids, she found a strength she didn’t always know she had.

Excellence encourages one about life generally; it shows the spiritual wealth of the world.

He didn’t come out of my belly, but my God, I’ve made his bones, because I’ve attended to every meal, and how he sleeps, and the fact that he swims like a fish because I took him to the ocean. I’m so proud of all those things. But he is my biggest pride.

Everything in the world may be endured except continual prosperity.

What used to keep me up at night was the fact that I didn’t know how I was going to pay the rent. Now that I can pay the rent, I’m worrying about people I care about, you know, the people I love. The little aches and pains of my children that I, my family. That’s always first.

I want to thank God, obviously for the health, for the talent He’s given me, for my family who supports me, for the things that basketball’s taught me on and off the court. For the people that I’ve been able to meet through the game of basketball.

No matter what happens in life, be good to people. Being good to people is a wonderful legacy to leave behind.

I don’t see the point of doing an interview unless you’re going to share the things you learn in life and the mistakes you make. So to admit that I’m extremely human and have done some dark things I don’t think makes me unusual or unusually dark. I think it actually is the right thing to do, and I’d like to think it’s the nice thing to do.

A man who carries a cat by the tail learns something he can learn in no other way.

My son complains about headaches. I tell him all the time, when you get out of bed, it’s feet first!

No evil can happen to a good man, either in life or after death.

Don’t judge other people. For example, if you want God’s anointing to be on you for parenting, you need to be careful not to criticize other parents.

No, we don’t own our children. Our parental privilege is to love them, to lead them, and to let them go.

I have spent so much time and so much energy making other people’s children stars.

Even if we give parents all the information they need and we improve school meals and build brand new supermarkets on every corner, none of that matters if when families step into a restaurant, they can’t make a healthy choice.

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

To prefer evil to good is not in human nature; and when a man is compelled to choose one of two evils, no one will choose the greater when he might have the less.

Fathers should be neither seen nor heard. That is the only proper basis for family life.

These wretched babies don’t come until they are ready.

To love and win is the best thing. To love and lose, the next best.

There are many harsh lessons to be learned from the gambling experience, but the harshest one of all is the difference between having Fun and being Smart.

For everything you have missed, you have gained something else, and for everything you gain, you lose something else.

But now, being a parent, I go home and see my son and I forget about any mistake I ever made or the reason I’m upset. I get home and my son is smiling or he comes running to me. It has just made me grow as an individual and grow as a man.

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

I’m not saying that love always takes you to heaven. Your life can become a nightmare. But that said, it is worth taking the risk.

My kids always perceived the bathroom as a place where you wait it out until all the groceries are unloaded from the car.

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

While I believed deeply in my husband’s vision for this country… and I was certain he would make an extraordinary President… like any mother, I was worried about what it would mean for our girls if he got that chance. How would we keep them grounded under the glare of the national spotlight?

I’ve never been pregnant, so I just feel God didn’t mean for me to have kids so that everybody else’s children could be mine.

I do believe in the old saying, ‚What does not kill you makes you stronger.‘ Our experiences, good and bad, make us who we are. By overcoming difficulties, we gain strength and maturity.

What you put into life is what you get out of it.

I find with most of my readers are kind of like me, sort of people who were a little bit naive in life and then learned the hard way that this is what’s going on, the political games and most of my readers write to me telling me that the book helped them open their eyes to what other people are doing to them.

The kids are old enough now – I just want to let them be kids. I don’t want to comment on them too much. They’re at an age where I just want to let them be kids.

I have just three things to teach: simplicity, patience, compassion. These three are your greatest treasures.

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

Someday I want to have children and give them all the love I never had.

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.

I have no problem yelling at anybody’s kid – free of charge!

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

Life is one big road with lots of signs. So when you riding through the ruts, don’t complicate your mind. Flee from hate, mischief and jealousy. Don’t bury your thoughts, put your vision to reality. Wake Up and Live!

Children wish fathers looked but with their eyes; fathers that children with their judgment looked; and either may be wrong.