Poets have said that the reason to have children is to give yourself immortality. Immortality? Now that I have five children, my only hope is that they are all out of the house before I die.

In order to succeed, your desire for success should be greater than your fear of failure.

I don't know the key to success, but the key to failure is trying to please everybody.

Every closed eye is not sleeping, and every open eye is not seeing.

People can be more forgiving than you can imagine. But you have to forgive yourself. Let go of what's bitter and move on.

Nothing I've ever done has given me more joys and rewards than being a father to my children.

Fatherhood is pretending the present you love most is soap-on-a-rope.

I wasn't always black... there was this freckle, and it got bigger and bigger.

Raising children is an incredibly hard and risky business in which no cumulative wisdom is gained: each generation repeats the mistakes the previous one made.

It isn't a matter of black is beautiful as much as it is white is not all that's beautiful.

The main goal of the future is to stop violence. The world is addicted to it.

I do not care so much what I am to others as I care what I am to myself.

Lost, yesterday, somewhere between sunrise and sunset, two golden hours, each set with sixty diamond minutes. No reward is offered for they are gone forever.

With everything that's thrown at you, whether it be problems at home, problems at work - whatever - basically, if you remain positive, you can see your way out of that.

It is always the case that when the Christian looks back, he is looking at the forgiveness of sins.

I feel my heart ache, but I've forgotten what that feeling means.

Ultimately, literature is nothing but carpentry.

Like most women, I remember my first drink in tender minutiae.

The qualities which a man seeks in his beloved are those characteristics of his own soul, whether he knows it or not.

I talk to bankers, distributors, marketing people. I used to sit at home in my tracksuit bottoms, and the real excitement of my day would be going out to get a copy of Private Eye and a latte.

We are the people that we have been waiting for and no one else is coming.