Whenever something went wrong when I was young – if I had a pimple or if my hair broke – my mom would say, ‚Sister mine, I’m going to make you some soup.‘ And I really thought the soup would make my pimple go away or my hair stronger.

There is that in the glance of a flower which may at times control the greatest of creation’s braggart lords.

Beauty is eternity gazing at itself in a mirror.

My father wasn’t perfect. He had a temper. I took some of that. He would snap, but the older he got, he started calming down. He learned about life, but the thing that he taught my whole family was that family was the most important thing and, no matter what, if a family member needs you, you go and help them out; you get there.

I have two main hair people I work with. They’re always with me. I’m like, ‚I’m bored! I wanna change my hair!‘ That’s the good thing about a weave. You can do whatever with it.

I hate to mention age, but I come from an era when we weren’t consumed by technology and television.

I take my kids to school. And if I go to work, I go to work, and they visit me on set. I come home. I have dinner with my family. I have breakfast with my family. I have a very solid, very warm home.

The discontented man finds no easy chair.

Of all nature’s gifts to the human race, what is sweeter to a man than his children?

Some of my foster families used to send me to the movies to get me out of the house and there I’d sit all day and way into the night. Up in front, there with the screen so big, a little kid all alone, and I loved it. I loved anything that moved up there and I didn’t miss anything that happened and there was no popcorn either.

My family was mostly unemployed working class.

Having a bunch of cats around is good. If you’re feeling bad, you just look at the cats, you’ll feel better because they know that everything is just as it is. There’s nothing to get excited about. They just know. They’re saviours.

I put cocoa butter all over my face and my iconic belly and my arms and legs. Why live rough? Live smooth.

Truths and roses have thorns about them.

I guess you could say I devoted myself so strongly to my music that for awhile I forgot about my family. But I only get one set of parents, and I think I forgot about that for a little while.

Too often we… enjoy the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought.

We’re constantly striving for success, fame and comfort when all we really need to be happy is someone or some thing to be enthusiastic about.

Heaven gives us hope and makes our present burdens easier to bear.

Things in themselves have no life in them. A car can’t comfort or encourage you. A house means nothing if there’s no life and love inside.

I’m so nervous. I’ve always been nervous, ever since I was a kid.

Art consists of limitation. The most beautiful part of every picture is the frame.

When I was a young kid, I did not even dream about playing for my country. It was such a farfetched thing to play for India.

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

I’ve been very lucky. I come from a very close family.

I was born in a very poor family. I used to sell tea in a railway coach as a child. My mother used to wash utensils and do lowly household work in the houses of others to earn a livelihood. I have seen poverty very closely. I have lived in poverty. As a child, my entire childhood was steeped in poverty.

I desire no future that will break the ties with the past.

I love to put on lotion. Sometimes I’ll watch TV and go into a lotion trance for an hour. I try to find brands that don’t taste bad in case anyone wants to taste me.

When I was 10 years old, I loved – I loved books, and I used to haunt the secondhand bookshop. And I found a little book I could just afford, and I bought it, and I took it home. And I climbed up my favorite tree, and I read that book from cover to cover. And that was Tarzan of the Apes. I immediately fell in love with Tarzan.

I was brought up as an only child, and we were very close. But when I was 14, we got evicted. We came home to a padlock, and I looked up at my mom and she was crying, and there was nothing to do.

In seeking comfort, we generally find a quiet corner in life where there is a minimum of conflict, and then we are afraid to step out of that seclusion.

Only on paper has humanity yet achieved glory, beauty, truth, knowledge, virtue, and abiding love.

Years ago I met Richard Burton in Port Talbot, my home town, and afterwards he passed in his car with his wife, and I thought, ‚I want to get out and become like him‘. Not because of Wales, because I love Wales, but because I was so limited as a child at school and so bereft and lonely, and I thought becoming an actor would do that.

Whenever I think of the past, it brings back so many memories.

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

Any man who doesn’t love his mama can’t be no friend of mine.

That’s one of the biggest things. Never being home, always traveling, having different interests and focusing on different things, just the time aspect of going back home and seeing them, you don’t have that at all. It was a big sacrifice but, at the end of the day, it was worth it.

One of the things I love most about being at home is that I’m comfortable there. And since we are the home of Christ, we need to make sure He’s comfortable in us.

My goal in music is to create nostalgic moments.

I don’t spend that much time being introspective, believe it or not. All I know is that I grew up not questioning God because that’s how you are. God was there like the birds and the wind.

You don’t have to deserve your mother’s love. You have to deserve your father’s.

I never dreamed of being a pop star when I was a child.

Too many people treat parenting like it’s the 20th item on their to-do list.

You know how you either grow up in a Michael Jackson house or a Prince house? For me it was Michael Jackson. I could never decide whether I wanted to be Michael Jackson or marry him.

I like being comfortable at airports, in flip-flops with no jewelry on.

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

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.

Being beautiful is not so fun when you’re in a business with all men.

Human subtlety will never devise an invention more beautiful, more simple or more direct than does nature because in her inventions nothing is lacking, and nothing is superfluous.

I’ve always liked older ladies, ever since my mother would have B’nai B’rith at our house.

Things ain’t what they used to be and never were.

I like to think my dad was easygoing and kind, and I think some of those things have been passed down. I am like him in a sense of being positive and hopeful. He was compassionate, and I’ve got a lot of that in me as well.

My parents were the same in the pulpit as they were at home. I think that’s where a lot of preachers‘ kids get off base sometimes. Because they don’t see the same things at both places.

The perception of beauty is a moral test.

The first man to compare the cheeks of a young woman to a rose was obviously a poet; the first to repeat it was possibly an idiot.

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.

When I write about a 15-year old, I jump, I return to the days when I was that age. It’s like a time machine. I can remember everything. I can feel the wind. I can smell the air. Very actually. Very vividly.

I like a good pair of jeans, but I also like putting on a nice tux. I’d rather go around in a good pair of jeans that you don’t wash every day, because they get more and more comfortable.

Who will take responsibility for raising the next generation?

I did stand-up for my grandparents every day when I was, like, eight.

We will invest in our people, quality education, job opportunity, family, neighborhood, and yes, a thing we call America.

My upbringing was solid because of the people I had around me.