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

My own eight children all march to the beat of their inner music, and in some cases, it is definitely far away from what I hear. I’ve had to honor their instincts and their choices, and merely guided them out of harm’s way until they could be their own guides.

There is, hidden or flaunted, a sword between the sexes till an entire marriage reconciles them.

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

I was raised a Catholic on both sides of the family. I went to a Catholic grade school and thought everybody in the country was Catholic, because that’s all I ever was associated with.

Loving someone liberates the lover as well as the beloved. And that kind of love comes with age.

I have a personal ambition to live my life honestly and honor the true love that I’ve had and also the people I’ve had around me. I want to stay hopeful, even though I get scared about why we’re even alive at all.

I think tolerance and acceptance and love is something that feeds every community.

One of the most terrible feelings in the world is knowing that someone else doesn’t like you. Especially when you don’t know what you’ve done to deserve it.

Confidence, as a teenager? Because I knew what I loved. I loved to read; I loved to listen to music; and I loved cats. Those three things. So, even though I was an only kid, I could be happy because I knew what I loved.

My next baby will be my new record.

A remark generally hurts in proportion to its truth.

For if you love those who love you, what reward have you? Do not even the tax collectors do the same?

To be loved is very demoralizing.

And I come here as a daughter, raised on the South Side of Chicago – by a father who was a blue-collar city worker and a mother who stayed at home with my brother and me.

Bachelors have consciences, married men have wives.

It was weird to be married; you kind of lose your identity. You’re suddenly somebody’s wife. And you’re like, ‚Oh, I’m half of a couple now. I’ve lost me.‘

The best thing is to always keep honest people around, because when you have a bunch of yes men around that know that you’re making a mistake but let you go on with it, that’s when it ruins your mind state as an artist.

Every man needs slaves like he needs clean air. To rule is to breathe, is it not? And even the most disenfranchised get to breathe. The lowest on the social scale have their spouses or their children.

I’m sure most parents read to their children to explain what certain things mean. So books are a good way to convey a message to anybody. Everybody reads.

A lot of Jews are great friends of mine.

I’m asking myself, ‚What do my girls, what do all our children deserve in their president? What kind of a president do we want for them?‘ Well, to start with, I think we want someone who is a unifying force in this country: someone who sees our differences not as a threat, but as a blessing.

I’ve done the bad-boy thing. It was fun for a good three months. But the thing about bad boys is, you have to keep in mind, you’re never gonna marry a bad boy.

The only way to get love is to be lovable. It’s very irritating if you have a lot of money. You’d like to think you could write a check: ‚I’ll buy a million dollars‘ worth of love.‘ But it doesn’t work that way. The more you give love away, the more you get.

In all our contacts it is probably the sense of being really needed and wanted which gives us the greatest satisfaction and creates the most lasting bond.

My mother fought cancer for almost a decade and died at 56. She held out long enough to meet the first of her grandchildren and to hold them in her arms. But my other children will never have the chance to know her and experience how loving and gracious she was.

I wish people would love everybody else the way they love me. It would be a better world.

I’ve been through natural disasters. I lived down in Miami and was down there for Hurricane Andrew which was a Category 5. There were members of my family that thought they were going to die. Everyone was in the bathtub.

That summer after the draft was probably the most fun I’ve ever had, because all I had to do every day was wake up and go work out for four or five hours. I got to play some golf, which I love to do, too, and then got to hang out with my family.

Relationships are the hallmark of the mature person.

I can’t relate to lazy people. We don’t speak the same language. I don’t understand you. I don’t want to understand you.

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

Wine is constant proof that God loves us and loves to see us happy.

The best way to find out if you can trust somebody is to trust them.

What we have once enjoyed we can never lose. All that we love deeply becomes a part of us.

The thing I want more than anything else? I want to have children. I used to feel for every child I had, I would adopt another.

Mysterious love, uncertain treasure, hast thou more of pain or pleasure! Endless torments dwell about thee: Yet who would live, and live without thee!

A friendship founded on business is better than a business founded on friendship.

With patient and firm determination, I am going to press on for jobs. I’m going to press on for equality. I’m going to press on for the sake of our children. I’m going to press on for the sake of all those families who are struggling right now. I don’t have time to feel sorry for myself. I don’t have time to complain. I am going to press on.

Those who know me know I’m passionate about lists, and top of my list of priorities is my family. My wife Joan and I do not consider our legacy to our children to be wealth or fame but the opportunity to pursue happiness by following their own path.

A friend is one who knows you and loves you just the same.

There is no such thing as society: there are individual men and women, and there are families.

As unique as we all are, an awful lot of us want the same things. We want to shake up our current less-than-fulfilling lives. We want to be happier, more loving, forgiving and connected with the people around us.

Often, little situations trigger enormous reactions. Be there, present for it. Your partner will find it easier to see it in you, and you will find it easier to see it in them.

There was one incident at a movie theater where my girl got mad at these guys who were talking behind us. I never looked back there, but she was like, ‚Will you all just shut up!‘ And I just got up and moved three rows in front. She was like, ‚What are you doing?!‘ I was like, ‚You better get up here! I don’t play the fighting games.‘

It is one of the blessings of old friends that you can afford to be stupid with them.

Politics is such a torment that I advise everyone I love not to mix with it.

I want parents to teach that academic intelligence is essential, but so is financial intelligence.

My chances of developing breast cancer have dropped from 87 percent to under 5 percent. I can tell my children that they don’t need to fear they will lose me to breast cancer.

So live with men as if God saw you and speak to God, as if men heard you.

When marrying, ask yourself this question: Do you believe that you will be able to converse well with this person into your old age? Everything else in marriage is transitory.

Country radio is much more like a family than any other group of people that I’ve met.

I think I am smart unless I am really, really in love, and then I am ridiculously stupid.

Our love, our gratitude, our admiration for our men and women in uniform, our veterans and their families – all of that is bigger than any one party or any one election.

Acquaintances we meet, enjoy, and can easily leave behind; but friendship grows deep roots.

Giving responsibility is the key to success with boys, especially with the rowdiest and most difficult boys.

In my divorce, I stood up and said to my ex-wife, ‚Hey, I messed up. This had nothing to do with you. I didn’t understand what marriage was. I cheated. I was wrong. We couldn’t fix it; it got worse. I stepped away because I didn’t want it to get any worse. You’re the mother of my kids – I don’t want to hate you.‘

I’ve known and continue to know every one of these major world leaders by their first names, and I have access to them.

I look upon every day to be lost, in which I do not make a new acquaintance.

All that I am, or hope to be, I owe to my angel mother.

All my momma’s people were very musical. My grandpa, who was the Pentecostal minister, he was a great musician. He played the fiddle, he played the piano.