When I cook for my family on Christmas, I make feijoada, a South American dish of roasted and smoked meats like ham, pork, beef, lamb, and bacon – all served with black beans and rice. It’s festive but different.

Yes, Mother. I can see you are flawed. You have not hidden it. That is your greatest gift to me.

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.

We’re African-American and we work together as a family, so people assume we’re like the Jacksons. But I didn’t have parents using me to get out of a bad situation.

My biological mother later found out that my mother had never graduated from college and that my father had never graduated from high school. She refused to sign the final adoption papers. She only relented a few months later when my parents promised that I would someday go to college.

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

My parents weren’t actors or studio executives.

Family quarrels are bitter things. They don’t go according to any rules. They’re not like aches or wounds, they’re more like splits in the skin that won’t heal because there’s not enough material.

My grandmother used to embarrass me more, when she would pick me up from school wearing a big fuzzy hat. I didn’t like that.

That’s the true spirit of Christmas; people being helped by people other than me.

Acting is just a way of making a living, the family is life.

You can call me the bad boy chef all you want. I’m not going to freak out about it. I’m not that bad. I’m certainly not a boy, and it’s been a while since I’ve been a chef.

You don’t choose your family. They are God’s gift to you, as you are to them.

Thank God, I never was cheerful. I come from the happy stock of the Mathers, who, as you remember, passed sweet mornings reflecting on the goodness of God and the damnation of infants.

I have a lot of other stuff to accomplish before I get to kids. Whenever the time is right, I’ll just know. If I had a girl, she’d probably be really rebellious. She would be like a bundle of karma. I would love to bring them up in Barbados.

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

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

Lil Wayne, that’s my brother. Birdman, that’s family.

It would have been difficult to have an ugly daughter.

If I were a woman, I would love to have lots of kids. But for men, I don’t believe in it.

I cook, I create, I’m incredibly excited by what I do, I’ve still got a lot to achieve.

I believe that my parents did wonderful things for us.

I love my daddy. My daddy’s everything. I hope I can find a man that will treat me as good as my dad.

I’m not trying to take New York by storm. I just want to sneak in there, keep my head down, batten down the hatches and cook.

People are always coming up to me and saying, ‚I heard your dad’s speech, and it’s really great.‘ And they’ll mention some place I didn’t even know my dad was going to.

I soothe my conscience now with the thought that it is better for hard words to be on paper than that Mummy should carry them in her heart.

We had problems like all families but we had a lot of love. I was extremely loved. We always felt we had each other.

My parents are my backbone. Still are. They’re the only group that will support you if you score zero or you score 40.

My parents were divorced by the time I was even conscious – like, I don’t remember them ever being together.

My mother was Catholic, my father was Protestant. There was always a debate going on at home – I think in those days we called them arguments – about who was right and who was wrong.

What life half gives a man, posterity gives entirely.

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

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.

The mother of a family should look upon her housekeeping and the planning of meals as a scientific occupation.

I remember how my mother would bring us to chapel on Sundays… and my father used to wait outside. One of the things that I picked up from my father and my mother was the sense that religion often gets in the way of God. For me, at least, it got in the way.

Michelle and I don’t want anyone telling us who our family’s doctor should be – and no one should decide that for you either. Under our proposals, if you like your doctor, you keep your doctor. If you like your current insurance, you keep that insurance. Period, end of story.

I never had a mother. I suppose a mother is one to whom you hurry when you are troubled.

My mom and I are very close.

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.

I never promise anything. I don’t promise anything to my mum. I don’t promise anything to the supporters.

Growing up, my grandmother did not want worldly music in the house. Then when I went out to California, I started listening to Spanish music, mostly Mexican music. But were I in Egypt, I would listen to the music of the people, or if I was in Italy, I’d listen to Italian music.

In my heart, I’m just a kid from the council houses. I can remember the old cottage and my dad coming round with the tin bath. I’m not a rich man.

I was fortunate and I was lucky that I had a couple of people in my life who cared about me. I had good, loving parents.

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

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

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.

I love Velveeta cheese.

It is amazing how a new child can refocus one’s direction seconds after its birth.

When I was young, my brother David and I were farmed off to foster homes, and I spent time in orphanages. My father abandoned us. Here’s the most important person in my life, and I never met him.

We make the Sabbath a delight when we teach the gospel to our children.

This is a moment that I deeply wish my parents could have lived to share. My father would have enjoyed what you have so generously said of me-and my mother would have believed it.

There’s no political point worth my son’s life.

My mother would kill me if I posed nude! My mother raised me with certain standards.

That’s what I do this for, to secure my family’s future. I don’t care about anything else. I’m able to spoil people, and that’s the best thing.

Before I was born, my father told my mother, ‚If it’s a boy, he’s going to be a scientist.‘

Christmas is a season not only of rejoicing but of reflection.

Your children are not your children. They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself. They came through you but not from you and though they are with you yet they belong not to you.

Happy, happy Christmas, that can win us back to the delusions of our childhood days, recall to the old man the pleasures of his youth, and transport the traveler back to his own fireside and quiet home!

I absolutely adore Christmas.

I used to carry my father’s Bible and put it on the pulpit so he could preach.

If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe.