When you have two busy kids running around the house, returning e-mails is a task, let alone surfing the web.

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.

If you are working 50 hours a week in a factory, you don’t have time to read 10 newspapers a day and go back to declassified government archives. But such people may have far-reaching insights into the way the world works.

People wonder aloud about whether I am an okay mother. That is obviously painful because it’s so important to me. It’s hard to hear that people think I’m not a capable mother and a good person, that they just think I’m nuts.

I had one incident where my daughter said that a girl asked if she was a brown person. I said, ‚We’re black. You have black people, white people, Chinese people, Hispanic people; we’re all brought up differently.‘

The one thing I want to leave my children is an honorable name.

Be careful to leave your sons well instructed rather than rich, for the hopes of the instructed are better than the wealth of the ignorant.

The more sand has escaped from the hourglass of our life, the clearer we should see through it.

Yes, sir, no, sir, clock in, clock out. Why were you late? Why are you not in today? That’s not how humans are supposed to live.

I realized why directors are such horrible people – in a way – because you want things to be right, and people will just not listen to you, and there is no time to be nice to people, no time to be delicate.

Adjusting to the passage of time, I think, is a key to success and to life: just being able to roll with the punches.

Work as if you were to live a hundred years. Pray as if you were to die tomorrow.

When a father puts in long hours at work, he’s praised for being dedicated and ambitious. But when a mother stays late at the office, she’s sometimes accused of being selfish, neglecting her kids.

Short cuts make long delays.

The least productive people are usually the ones who are most in favor of holding meetings.

You’re never too old, too wacky, too wild, to pick up a book and read to a child.

Managers today have to do more with less, and get better results from limited resources, more than ever before.

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

The best way to give advice to your children is to find out what they want and then advise them to do it.

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.

Any other woman who has to go to work and pick up the kids and make dinner – that’s way harder than what I have to do.

Outlook 2003 did create the idea of search folders and the whole Longhorn philosophy. You can see it at work in search folders, where instead of having to drop things into individual folders, and things exist only in one folder, you create these search folders and you have the criteria for the search folder.

With the amount of money I have, it’s difficult raising children the way I was raised.

I think, at a child’s birth, if a mother could ask a fairy godmother to endow it with the most useful gift, that gift should be curiosity.

I’ve been on a calendar, but I’ve never been on time.

Try and leave this world a little better than you found it, and when your turn comes to die, you can die happy in feeling that at any rate, you have not wasted your time but have done your best.

The best preparation for good work tomorrow is to do good work today.

My mother insisted that her children read.

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.

Build me a son, O Lord, who will be strong enough to know when he is weak, and brave enough to face himself when he is afraid, one who will be proud and unbending in honest defeat, and humble and gentle in victory.

He that rises late must trot all day.

My children, to the extent that they have found religion, have found it from me, in that I insist on at least a modicum of religious education for them.

If I feel good about my parenting, I have no interest in judging other people’s choices. If I feel good about my body, I don’t go around making fun of other people’s weight or appearance. We’re hard on each other because we’re using each other as a launching pad out of our own perceived deficiency.

I do not love to be printed on every occasion, much less to be dunned and teased by foreigners about mathematical things or to be thought by our own people to be trifling away my time about them when I should be about the king’s business.

This time, like all times, is a very good one, if we but know what to do with it.

I like to do things quickly because I’m easily bored.

But I was the most unashamed lone parent you were ever going to meet.

My mother was determined to make us independent. When I was four years old, she stopped the car a few miles from our house and made me find my own way home across the fields. I got hopelessly lost.

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.

If you’re living in your time, you cannot help but to write about the things that are important.

When a child is locked in the bathroom with water running and he says he’s doing nothing but the dog is barking, call 911.

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

To write it, it took three months; to conceive it three minutes; to collect the data in it all my life.

Get up tomorrow early in the morning, and earlier than you did today, and do the best that you can. Always stay near me, for tomorrow I will have much to do and more than I ever had, and tomorrow blood will leave my body above the breast.

Clearly this is a tough economic time, and a lot of families are hurting. So when we talk to parents, we talk about small changes for kids and things that don’t cost extra money. Like adding water and eliminating sugary drinks and sodas. That’s going to save money right there. Or adding a few more vegetables.

I do not raise brats!

My theory is 98 percent of all human endeavor is killing time.

No, there is literally nothing on the business side that I wouldn’t sacrifice in a heartbeat to have an extra couple of hours‘ writing. Nothing.

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.

A veteran journalist has never had time to think twice before he writes.

My experiences in life are getting bigger and better. The more stuff I do, the more stuff I talk about – having kids, traveling, going through relationship problems, dealing with things in my own family. All that stuff builds character.

What’ll we do with ourselves this afternoon? And the day after that, and the next thirty years?

Dost thou love life? Then do not squander time, for that is the stuff life is made of.

I had this child, and it destroyed my family.

The joys of parents are secret, and so are their grieves and fears.

We must use time as a tool, not as a couch.

Don’t think in the morning. That’s a big mistake that people make. They wake up in the morning and they start thinking. Don’t think. Just execute the plan. The plan is the alarm clock goes off, you get up, you go work out. Get some.

I always tried to do things by example, even though I was not a very good mother regarding routines and family life.

Nothing extraordinary happens to a cricketer if you time his career – which is very short.

Always kiss your children goodnight, even if they’re already asleep.

The bottom line is, when people are crystal clear about the most important priorities of the organization and team they work with and prioritized their work around those top priorities, not only are they many times more productive, they discover they have the time they need to have a whole life.