The uncertainty of parenting can bring up feelings in us that range from frustration to terror.

A relationship can give you a gut wrenching feeling sometimes. It’s a real emotional ride.

Love is a gross exaggeration of the difference between one person and everybody else.

I think women go crazy for a reason. It’s not like it just happens.

Ah, women. They make the highs higher and the lows more frequent.

If you only do things where you know the answer in advance, your company goes away.

The influence of a mother upon the lives of her children cannot be measured. They know and absorb her example and attitudes when it comes to questions of honesty, temperance, kindness, and industry.

Kids are watching us. I experience it every single day. They hang on my every word, what I wear, what I say.

For any young democracy, the most difficult but important step is burying the legacy of tyranny and establishing an economy and a government and institutions that abide by the rule of law. Every country faces challenges to the rule of law, including my own.

The deep, personal material of the latter half of your life is your children. You can write about your parents when they’re gone, but your children are still going to be here, and you’re going to want them to come and visit you in the nursing home.

If merely ‚feeling good‘ could decide, drunkenness would be the supremely valid human experience.

Life is a constant oscillation between the sharp horns of dilemmas.

Love does not begin and end the way we seem to think it does. Love is a battle, love is a war; love is a growing up.

One of the powerful temptations is that of the cinema palace. The cinema has undoubtedly an enormous attraction for boys, and people are constantly cudgelling their brains how to stop it. But it is one of those things which would be very difficult to stop even if it were altogether desirable.

Your children will see what you’re all about by what you live rather than what you say.

My life is a struggle.

Though men determine, the gods doo dispose: and oft times many things fall out betweene the cup and the lip.

Adversity is sometimes hard upon a man; but for one man who can stand prosperity, there are a hundred that will stand adversity.

The advantage of the emotions is that they lead us astray.

I had to resign myself, many years ago, that I’m not too articulate when it comes to explaining how I feel about things. But my music does it for me, it really does.

I used to meditate all the time in bed. That was when I was raising my daughter, and I’d get her up and off to school, and then I would go back to bed and meditate. And then I would do the same in the evening, and that was very good for that period because I had so many things to juggle as a single mother.

Emotions are continually affecting our thought processes and decisions, below the level of our awareness. And the most common emotion of them all is the desire for pleasure and the avoidance of pain.

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

Optimism comes less easily today, not because democracy is less vigorous, but because democracy’s enemies have refined their instruments of repression.

It’s kind of like a challenge to myself to be able to hear somebody else’s hook and kind of interpret the words. Because my own hooks, I already know what I mean when I write them.

We always deceive ourselves twice about the people we love – first to their advantage, then to their disadvantage.

Anger makes dull men witty, but it keeps them poor.

I like the way the stories of my relationships sound to music more than the way they look in print, in gossip columns or in me talking about them in interviews. I think it’s a better way of telling the stories.

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

It isn’t the mountains ahead to climb that wear you out; it’s the pebble in your shoe.

When I was writing ‚Kitchen Confidential,‘ I was in my 40s, I had never paid rent on time, I was 10 years behind on my taxes, I had never owned my own furniture or a car.

With every word we utter, with every action we take, we know our kids are watching us. We as parents are their most important role models.

Of all forms of caution, caution in love is perhaps the most fatal to true happiness.

The best thing about being a dad? Well, I think it’s just the thing that every man wants – to have a son and heir.

My mother did not like children.

When we make progress quickly, it feeds our emotions. Then, when there’s a period of waiting or we hit a plateau, we find out how committed we really are and whether we’re going to see things through to the finish or quit.

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?

Context and memory play powerful roles in all the truly great meals in one’s life.

My whole family have all been through a difficult time. My focus is my children, our children.

Life is hard. After all, it kills you.

There are a lot of inaccuracies out there when it comes to the SEAL training process. You will see guys carrying logs around on television. They think that the hardest part about being on a SEAL team is getting through that training. The fact of the matter is, if you have a good attitude, that training is fun. I had a blast.

Absolute silence leads to sadness. It is the image of death.

Creative people don’t behave very well generally. If you’re looking for examples of good relationships in show business, you’re gonna be depressed real fast. I don’t have time for anything else right now but work and my daughter. She’s my first priority.

Men weren’t always happy for me. It was very challenging to watch a woman be so successful.

It’s hard to speculate what tomorrow may bring.

The emotions in a song – the anger, aggression – have got to be legitimate.

I want kids. I want a soccer team, and I want a husband.

There are certain nights you and your image just aren’t in the same bed.

Every single one of us has a few months here or there that feel like dark months.

No great deed is done by falterers who ask for certainty.

There is a thin line that separates laughter and pain, comedy and tragedy, humor and hurt.

The pain of parting is nothing to the joy of meeting again.

My son’s full real name is Duncan Zowie Haywood. As a toddler, he was called by his second name Zowie. But it was such an identifiable name during the Seventies that if I called him loudly in public places, everyone would turn to stare, so I started calling him Joey to take the pressure off.

Most people would rather give than get affection.

Wisdom ceases to be wisdom when it becomes too proud to weep, too grave to laugh, and too selfish to seek other than itself.

I’m pretty sure I don’t have any songs that are about how much I love someone. They’re all either about, like, ‚I hate you,‘ or ‚You make me hate me.‘

Our lifelong certainties about the world can be demolished in a single second.

I mean, I feel like you get more bees with honey. But that doesn’t mean I don’t get frustrated in my life.

Because I am a mother, I am capable of being shocked: as I never was when I was not one.

Music fills in for words a lot of the time when people don’t know what to say, and I think music can be more eloquent than words.

I think ‚The Color Purple‘ is so bursting with love, the need for connection, the showing of the need for connection around the globe.