You know, my family and friends have never been yes-men: ‚Yes, you’re doing the right thing, you’re always right.‘ No, they tell me when I’m wrong, and that’s why I’ve been able to stay who I am and stay humble.

I don’t think consensus-building politics is what I’m meant to be doing.

I would say the most satisfying thing actually is watching my three children each pick up on their own interests and work many more hours per week than most people that have jobs at trying to intelligently give away that money in fields that they particularly care about.

My family was mostly unemployed working class.

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

We must distinguish between speaking to deceive and being silent to be reserved.

No man should escape our universities without knowing how little he knows.

If you’re the parent, be a parent. You know what I mean? I’m a parent. I have daughters.

My grandpa was a preacher.

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

A family looks for ways to support and inspire one another.

You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth.

The infinitely little have a pride infinitely great.

I can never say ‚why‘ about anything I do. I suppose I can say ‚how‘ and ‚when‘ and ‚what.‘ But ‚why‘ is impenetrable to me.

Who had deceived thee so often as thyself?

This happiness consisted of nothing else but the harmony of the few things around me with my own existence, a feeling of contentment and well-being that needed no changes and no intensification.

I think it’s an Irish thing. We don’t really care. We say it as we mean it, and you have to deal with it. The truth is the truth.

The man with insight enough to admit his limitations comes nearest to perfection.

My public is growing up just as I am. After all, I’m not 19 anymore and if I stick with the sex bit, who will be paying to see me when I’m 50?

My father had died, and very swiftly, too, of cancer of the esophagus. He was 79. I am 61. In whatever kind of a ‚race‘ life may be, I have very abruptly become a finalist.

Fear doesn’t exist anywhere except in the mind.

As a father and now a grandfather to three wonderful grandchildren, I know how magical the first year of a child’s life is but also how much hard work it takes. Being able to spend as much time as possible with your loved ones is absolutely vital, especially early on.

All of my friends who have younger siblings who are going to college or high school – my number one piece of advice is: You should learn how to program.

Moral authority is never retained by any attempt to hold on to it. It comes without seeking and is retained without effort.

If every choice you make comes from an honest place, you’re solid, and nothing anybody can say about you can rock you or change your opinion.

For me, already being part of a single parent household and knowing it was just me and my mom, you’d would wake up times and hope that the next day you’d be able to be alongside your mother because she was out trying to make sure that I was taken care of. But all I cared about was her being home.

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

I don’t think I get that upset over things.

The day you stop doing the small things is the day you think you’re above everybody else.

I remember when I was in high school I didn’t have a new dress for each special occasion. The girls would bring the fact to my attention, not always too delicately. The boys, however, never bothered with the subject. They were my friends, not because of the size of my wardrobe but because they liked me.

I’m a spokesman for myself. It just so happens that there’s a bunch of people that are concerned with what I have to say. I find that frightening at times because I’m just as confused as most people. I don’t have the answers for anything.

Many people resented my impatience and honesty, but I never cared about acceptance as much as I cared about respect.

I wanted a name I could shape the music towards. I was going to Miami quite a lot at the time, speaking a lot of Spanish with my friends from Cuba – ‚Lana Del Rey‘ reminded us of the glamour of the seaside. It sounded gorgeous coming off the tip of the tongue.

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.

Deep down, I know I have this intuition or instinct that a lot of creative people have, that their demons are also what make them create.

I just want my family to be safe. Because I am sometimes polarizing, I fear for their safety.

I’m almost like three people. There’s me the, Dolly, the person. There’s me, the star. And then there’s me, the manager.

Our character is what we do when we think no one is looking.

Your love is not outside; it is deep within you. You can never lose it, and it cannot leave you. It is not dependent on some other body, some external form.

No legacy is so rich as honesty.

I had to make a choice at one point in my life, of missing films or missing my children. It was a very easy decision to make because I missed my children so very much.

Especially for those of us who lived in single cells, you had the time to sit down and think, and we discovered that sitting down just to think is one of the best ways of keeping yourself fresh and able, to be able to address the problems facing you, and you had the opportunity, also, of examining your past.

I’ll be honest: I haven’t ruled politics out.

I more fear what is within me than what comes from without.

Tell the truth, but tell it slant.

I’ve always been really, really aware of my insecurities – really, really aware. I never developed that thick skin that keeps you from letting things get to you.

I’m an emotional person.

There was the time I bought three cars in the span of three or four weeks. It was crazy; it wasn’t greedy. It was mine, my girl’s, my mom’s. I got Benzes for my ladies. But I felt crazy. You have to understand I come from a world where we’re very modest. But that’s not greedy. That’s nice, right?

Within one’s own family, money is not the measure of things, unless the person is an absolute Scrooge. Only the most extreme kind of monster would put a price on everything.

An author who speaks about their own books is almost as bad as a mother who speaks about her own children.

If you have a family mission statement that clarifies what your purpose is, then you use that as the criterion by which you make the decisions.

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.

I have an existential map. It has ‚You are here‘ written all over it.

And so our mothers and grandmothers have, more often than not anonymously, handed on the creative spark, the seed of the flower they themselves never hoped to see – or like a sealed letter they could not plainly read.

I’ve had no problem harnessing anger.

It doesn’t take much to make me angry.

Every spoken word arouses our self-will.

It’s normal for human beings to identify with their own separate self. The problem is that we get caught in that notion of ourself as a separate individual and caught in that individual self’s agenda.

I’ve told Billy if I ever caught him cheating, I wouldn’t kill him because I love his children and they need a dad. But I would beat him up. I know where all of his sports injuries are.

I understand aggressiveness in only one way: being prepared to hurt yourself, not someone else.

I’d like to be known for more than being the guy in the big suit.