Children

I am sure of this: that no one can write a book which children will like unless he write it for himself first.

Is 'The Wind in the Willows' a children's book? Is 'Alice in Wonderland?' Is 'Treasure Island?' These are masterpieces which we read with pleasure as children, but with how much more pleasure when we are grown-up.

I think that the young people today feel a tremendous sense of responsibility to their brothers and sisters because of the sacrifices that most families make to send their children to college.

Chum was a British boy's weekly which, at the end of the year was bound into a single huge book, and the following Christmas parents bought it as Christmas presents for male children.

To the Parisians, and especially to the children, all Americans are now 'heros du cinema.' This is particularly disconcerting to sensitive war correspondents, if any, aware, as they are, that these innocent thanks belong to those American combat troops who won the beachhead and then made the breakthrough. There are few such men in Paris.

My children went to Bethesda Elementary School. I wouldn't do anything to endanger the safety of Bethesda.

It is remarkable how easily children and grown-ups adapt to living in a dictatorship organised by lunatics.

Let us sacrifice our today so that our children can have a better tomorrow.

While children are struggling to be unique, the world around them is trying all means to make them look like everybody else.

A surprising number of people - including many students of literature - will tell you they haven't really lived in a book since they were children. Sadly, being taught literature often destroys the life of the books.

I am not sure how much good is done by moralising about fairy tales. This can be unsubtle - telling children that virtue will be rewarded, when in fact it is mostly simply the fact of being the central character that ensures a favourable outcome. Fairy tales are not, on the whole, parables.

In March 1950, in New York City, I was married to Marietta Soffer. We have three children: Vilhelm, Tomas, and Margrethe.

I think Michelle Obama is on the right track with her Let's Move campaign to bring down childhood obesity. She and I come from the same state, Illinois, which is number four in the nation for obese children. One out of five Illinois children are considered obese. Not overweight, obese. And two-thirds of Americans are either overweight or obese.

It is ironic that it doesn't matter how successful I am in any other capacity: ultimately, my parents' marker is 'Do you have a wife?' and 'Do you have children?'

People lament that there's no roles being written for South Asian or Muslim characters. But their parents don't want their children to go into the entertainment field. You don't get it both ways.

I would love to be a mum if I'm blessed to have children. My wife and I have those plans.

I, talking about my children, of course I wanted them to succeed in life, they have to choose whatever job or occupation that they want, I will not try to influence.

Sometimes children do forget their filial responsibilities.

We go fish, we also catch fighting fish, looking for birds and it was for kampong people, the paddy field was our the play field for the children.

Many will view the compromises that will be made during your negotiations as painful concessions. But why not view them as peace offerings, ones that will provide in return the priceless gifts of hope, security and freedom for our children and our children's?

I still feel that in India we look upon sports as a recreational activity - which it is - but people have to understand that there is a career in sports. It's not just necessary to be a doctor or a lawyer or an engineer, as most of us Indians appear to think that our children should grow up to be.

I think if we understand better the impact of war on women and children, we might be more careful about the wars we start.

A test of a people is how it behaves toward the old. It is easy to love children. Even tyrants and dictators make a point of being fond of children. But the affection and care for the old, the incurable, the helpless are the true gold mines of a culture.

The man who could go to Africa and rob her of her children, and then sell them into interminable bondage, with no other motive than that which is furnished by dollars and cents, is so much worse than the most depraved murderer that he can never receive pardon at my hand.

Marriage is a school itself. Also, having children. Becoming a father changed my whole life. It taught me as if by revelation.

If my children do not behave according to Islam, if they do not pray for instance, I will punish them.

I was born in Jerusalem in 1939 to a poor family that shared a rented four-room apartment with two additional families and their children.

During past years, like frightened children, we were afraid to eat the strong meat of human rights and instead sucked the milk of civil rights from the breasts of white liberals, black Uncle Toms, and Aunt Jemimas.

Many Christians do not believe God sends tornadoes. But they do believe that God walks with His children through the storms, that He sends His people to help after the storms, and that with and through God, there is always hope.

When my kids were growing up, I wanted their teachers to teach them science, reading, math and history. I also wanted them to care about my kids. But I did not want my children's public school teachers teaching them religion. That was my job as a parent and the job of our church, Sunday school, and youth group.

I think all children draw, as soon as they figure out the thumb and can grab crayons. The only difference with people like myself is that we never stopped drawing.

I've been drawing as long as I can remember. I think all children draw as soon as they figure out the thumb and can grab crayons. The only difference with people like myself is that we never stopped drawing.

Children crave routine and find listening to the same stories over and over again soothing. If you've grown weary of the holiday books you've read your kid 7,883 times, try adding 'dude' to the end of every line of dialogue.

It's hilarious to me that by writing an obscene fake children's book I am mistaken for a parenting expert.

This character feels so much like my brother. He has two children. He has a wife. He works with me. He chooses to stay in New Hampshire because he wants his kids to grow up in the school they started with. He doesn't want them to lose friends. He is his family's hero.

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

Growing up in New York, I was sort of shocked when I realized that my children are Californians. They are 14 years old, and I explain to them frequently that they will never realize the glory of a snow day. You wake up and the world says, 'Oops, it's too much fun to go to school, you've got to stay home and deal with the snow!'

I'm actually the fourth generation in my family to have no practical use for the church, or God, or religion. My children continue this trend.

If giving points to some students to achieve greater diversity is a quota system in violation of the Constitution, how can the awarding of points to the children of a less diverse alumni be upheld?

I really like being thrown into the works. Many actors, I have found, have this as a common trait. We had to, as children, adapt to various situations with either a military family or things like that.

It's a significant question: should black people only adopt black children, and white people white children?

Far too often, children with developmental disorders are diagnosed solely on the basis of their observable behavior, slotted into broad diagnostic pigeonholes and provided generalized treatments that may not always meet their specific needs.

I take leave of Prome and her towering god, Shwa Lan-dau, at whose base I have been laboring with the kindest intentions for the last three months and a half. Too firmly founded art thou to be overthrown at present, but the children of those who now plaster thee with gold will yet pull thee down, nor leave one brick upon another.

As children, we have a tenuous idea of love, we often try to quantify it with how much we feel seen and heard.

Hoping to instill my love of learning in other children, I taught my first class at a local elementary school the year my first book, 'Flying Fingers,' debuted, since then, I have spoken at hundreds of schools, classrooms and conferences around the world.

Students read for tests and because their parents ask them to, but I think it's very important to tell children that you can read for fun, too, and to understand human spirit. It builds empathy.

There are lots of different interpretations of the word 'prodigy.' My own is of someone who is talented and tries to help other children. So in that respect I could be called one, although I don't think I'll go off the rails.

Autism currently affects one in 88 children in the U.S., and its prevalence continues to rise. That's why it's important to help organizations like Autism Speaks raise awareness and funds to support families and individuals impacted by it.

The nomads' egalitarian lifestyle astonished the Greeks, who kept their own women indoors weaving and minding children. The exotic Scythian lifestyle fueled the Greek imagination and led to an outpouring of myths about fierce Amazons, 'the equals of men.'

The worker can unionize, go out on strike, mothers are divided from each other in homes, tied to their children by compassionate bonds, our wildcat strikes have most often taken the form of physical or mental breakdown.

I used to be a shopper before I had children. I'd go to Bergdorf and Barneys all the time. But now my weekends are spent differently. I go to the skating rink or the park, not the stores.

It's my personality to be more quiet and reserved. I'm not going out every night to multiple things. I prefer to stay in and be with my children and do Spanish homework to make sure they get a good grade the next day.

If it's taught well, art really is important to kids early on. It helps children develop language and allows them to see themselves in a way that isn't right or wrong, because if they draw an animal with five legs instead of four, nobody's criticizing them for it.

Germany is in terrible condition this year. This is particularly true of the working masses, who are so undernourished that tuberculosis is having a rich harvest, particularly of adolescent children.

I was so tired once 'Abba' was over and just wanted to be calm and with my children. I married, was in 'Abba,' had my children, divorced, all in ten years. I wonder how I managed it, but I was young.

My life contains so many other things, I have my children, my grandchildren, my two dogs and a big place in the country. I have my own life.

Like everywhere in the world, people of the Middle East aspire to liberty and justice. They wish to have a better life and a decent education for their children.

For me, now, working and children is it. There's nothing more to life.

An infinite God can give all of Himself to each of His children. He does not distribute Himself that each may have a part, but to each one He gives all of Himself as fully as if there were no others.

One thing I've learned, in the face of all kinds of indignities, domestic workers take so much pride in their work and love the children they care for.

Sure, I'd love to have children some day. But world domination comes first.

For someone to say that marriage is only about procreation is a joke. I didn't marry my husband to have children. I married my husband because I love my husband.

Both of them were the children of the United States. They sacrificed their children for the benefit of the others. But they were not very devoted children of the United States.

One has to nurture a new generation, to raise children in the spirit of Islam.

Beloved are Israel, for they were called children of God, still greater was the love in that it was made known to them that they were called children of God, as it is written, 'Ye are the children of the Lord your God.'

Why don't we focus on what Afghan women can do? They can cook, bear children and pray. As I recall, that was fine for our grandmothers.

Artists are just children who refuse to put down their crayons.

I grew up with my grandparents around. I think that's important for a child. If for no other reason than to hear stories about their parents when they were children.

Countries around the world have their own immigration laws and methods of dealing with a recurring theme: desperate people searching for peace from volatile parts of the world. And nations everywhere thrive and prosper from the contributions of immigrants and the children of immigrants - including right here in the U.S.

From racial profiling and being pulled over just for 'driving while black' to this new phenomenon of killing unarmed people out of some preconceived idea of fear, our lives and our children's lives are not being valued.

My message to everyone: the next time you hear about migrant children near the border, just picture them as your own. Then think what you would want our government to do.

One of the reasons I get so much joy out of my own children's childhoods is that I'm having my first childhood myself.

Throughout my years championing for civil rights, analyzing politics and advocating on behalf of the voiceless, I am disturbed the most when harmless children suffer because of politics or detrimental policies.

I did have a child, and I was reading a lot of picture books to her, but at the same time writing a children's book was something that I'd been wanting to do for many years, pretty much since the start of my career.

I keep a picture of my beloved children close by. Also, water and plenty of pads and pens.

I tell my children what I think myself: That religion is not necessarily convincing, but it is still interesting and not to be laughed at or denigrated.

I do very well three things: my job, stupidities and children.

It's a funny feeling to work with people who you consider your colleagues and to realize that they actually are young enough to be your children.

I love doing kids' shows, and I love working with kids. I've done a lot of it. A lot of people don't like working with children, but I love it.

Children always assume the sexual lives of their parents come to a grinding halt at their conception.

We were put to Dickens as children but it never quite took. That unremitting humanity soon had me cheesed off.

Were we closer to the ground as children, or is the grass emptier now?

Getting inside the mind of a terrorist wasn't difficult at all. Even as children, human beings fabricate elaborate revenge fantasies. We're not a particular species. Check out popular video games.

Ancestor worship, or filial piety so characteristic of Asian cultures, for example, does not really resonate with Americans who favor children, not grandparents.

When we, through our educational culture, through the media, through the entertainment culture, give our children the impression that human beings cannot control their passions, we are telling them, in effect, that human beings cannot be trusted with freedom.

I never talk about 'Harry Potter' because I think that would rob children of something that's private to them. I think too many things get explained, so I hate talking about it.

Three children have become adults since a phone call with Jo Rowling, containing one small clue, persuaded me that there was more to Snape than an unchanging costume, and that even though only three of the books were out at that time, she held the entire massive but delicate narrative in the surest of hands.

Actors are frightened little children.

I believe employment regulations for women, whereby the prospective employer is not able to inquire about the interviewee's status regarding children, childcare, or indeed their intention of becoming a parent, are counterproductive.

The only people whose opinions I worry about are my wife, my children, and my employees.

As a father, my first priority is to help my sons set and attain personal goals so they will develop self-confidence and individual strength. Engaging in regular fitness activities with my children helps me fulfill those responsibilities.

I didn't want to be one of those women who wake up at 63 years old and realize they've missed the window of opportunity for marriage and children.

I have often been struck by the fact that most parents who are experiencing positive and rewarding relationships with their pre-adolescent children are, nevertheless, waiting apprehensively and bracing themselves for the stormy adolescent period.

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.

The pursuit of truth and beauty is a sphere of activity in which we are permitted to remain children all our lives.

I believe it is my responsibility to do what I can for children and people with Down syndrome as well as in my native Dominican Republic.

I have five young children, and I take being a role model very seriously.

When school children start paying union dues, that 's when I'll start representing the interests of school children.

Children are remarkable for their intelligence and ardor, for their curiosity, their intolerance of shams, the clarity and ruthlessness of their vision.

As my friend said to me, when you have children, typically in a second marriage, when you're older and you get married again to a woman who would have children, you must always remember that you make sure the children attend a college where the commencement ceremonies are held in a facility with a wheelchair accessible ramp.

Being able to stay home with my children is what I prefer.

My children are the only thing in my life that makes me happy.

There are women who get divorced in order to punish. Out of this bitter, bitter hatred that some of these women have for their ex-husbands, they turn their children against them.

I grew up in southern Sudan, one of nine children. Our life was simple but very happy.

I feel, in 2015, when we see human beings and children dying to cross the ocean, trying to find safety, something more must be done to help them because refugees are just like me and you.

I have eight brothers and sisters, so I'd like to have a few children.

I've seen mothers and children really being vulnerable in the refugee camps, it's supposed to be temporary, but they end up having children who have grown up in refugee camps.

My life was filled with family in South Sudan. I am the seventh of nine children, and we grew up in what would be considered a middle-class family. We did not have a lot, but we did have more than a lot of other people.

I think children in general have a very hard time - at least I did - expressing any pain because I didn't want to hurt the people that I loved.

I look at my books the way parents look at their children. The fact that one becomes more successful than the others doesn't make me love the less successful one any less.

Nobody can do for little children what grandparents do. Grandparents sort of sprinkle stardust over the lives of little children.

Children's programming in America, I think it's pretty shoddy in terms of lack of diversity. It's pretty much cartoons and Disney sort of shows. I don't find any of that stimulating for children.

In England, 'Doctor Who' has always been considered a children's show, at least by children.

We have three daughters, our own. And, of course, there's nothing more frightening than something bad happening to them. And also, the thought of our children turning bad in some ways is another frightening thought.

There are few successful adults who were not first successful children.

Children are often better actors than adults because they have a greater capacity for believing in a situation.

I wanted to make an adult vampire film, not something for children.

I feel like now my kids can run around and say, 'My mom was the Rock's daughter.' I don't have kids yet, but my future children - I just feel like it's the coolest thing ever.

The human overpopulation issue is the topic I see as the most vital to solve if our children and grandchildren are to have a good quality of life.

Unless everyone grasps the importance of having only two children per couple, wars won't be over just oil anymore, they will be over water and food.

It is unacceptable that the system we rely on to develop children into well-adjusted, learned, cultured adults allows drones to dominate and increasingly devalues freethinkers.

I had to marry a Greek, I had to stir up the ethnic pot. Otherwise, my children would have been anemic and sickly. Now they've got some good Mediterranean blood in them.

How is it that little children are so intelligent and men so stupid? It must be education that does it.

My children have stolen my dreams in a very literal sense. I've lost months in the minutes and hours that Sabine and Zoey have needed me at night, their thin, butterfly-beating hearts pushed against me in the darkness.

I've said many times that there only two things to write about: love and death. And when you have children, you remember that the world is full of sharp corners and dangerous things, and suddenly you have these small, soft creatures, which you love in almost painful way.

There is a huge tension in trying to write with small children because they demand your attention and your time with a fierceness that can be matched by nothing else, but if you are successful in writing while you have small children, I actually think that your writing is likely to be deeper than it was before.

Once you became associated with a children's show, you're finished.

For me, my films are not like my children. They are like my ex-wife. They gave me so much, I gave them so much, I loved them so much, we part ways, and it's OK, we part ways.

The two real leads in 'Children of Men' are Clive Owen and the social environment. You know, this same movie without the social environment maybe is just like a generic chase movie.

Sadly, I haven't had a brain cell since I had children.

I am trying to cultivate the notion that constantly misplacing one's cell phone is a charming eccentricity... my children aren't buying it.

My children have gone to Catholic school... Part of their whole education is talking about the inner life and looking at your life, even though you're only 15 or 16 - thinking about your mortality, thinking about the value of your life, thinking about your obligations.

The reason why parents mistreat their children has less to do with character and temperament than with the fact that they were mistreated themselves and were not permitted to defend themselves.

Those children who are beaten will in turn give beatings, those who are intimidated will be intimidating, those who are humiliated will impose humiliation, and those whose souls are murdered will murder.

The men in those old days of the seventeenth century, when in constant dread of attacks by Indians, always rose when the services were ended and left the house before the women and children, thus making sure the safe exit of the latter.

There is something inexpressibly sad in the thought of the children who crossed the ocean with the Pilgrims and the fathers of Jamestown, New Amsterdam, and Boston, and the infancy of those born in the first years of colonial life in this strange new world.

I was a grade B housewife, maybe a B minus. But when I got time to write, I would be unable to finish a sentence. I had anxiety attacks. Partly it was a way of personifying the situation because I couldn't breathe. I was surrounded by people and by duties. I was a housewife and the children's mother, and I was judged on how I performed those roles.

The deep, personal material of the latter half of your life is your children. You can write about your parents when they're gone, but your children are still going to be here, and you're going to want them to come and visit you in the nursing home.

A people do not throw their geniuses away. And if they are thrown away, it is our duty as artists and as witnesses for the future to collect them again for the sake of our children and, if necessary, bone by bone.

I consider the fact that thousands of children die each day from starvation and a lack of medicine a crisis for humanity and a problem we must collectively attempt to solve.

I know from having had a child, and from having been a child myself, that children will copy you.

I see children, all children, as humanity's most precious resource, because it will be to them that the care of the planet will always be left.

It is healthier, in any case, to write for the adults one's children will become than for the children one's 'mature' critics often are.

We must do everything in our power to cease the behaviour that makes children everywhere feel afraid.

We must, I believe, start teaching our children the sanity of nonviolence much earlier.

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

Create a garden, bring children to farms for field trips. I think it's important that parents and teachers get together to do one or two things they can accomplish well - a teaching garden, connecting with farms nearby, weave food into the curriculum.

I am disappointed because nobody is talking about food and agriculture. They're talking about the diets of children, but they're talking about Band-Aids. We're not seeing a vision.

I really am at a place where I think we need to feed every child at school for free and feed them a real school lunch that's sustainable and nutritious and delicious. It needs to be part of the curriculum of the school in the same way that physical education was part of the curriculum, and all children participated.

I think America's food culture is embedded in fast-food culture. And the real question that we have is: How are we going to teach slow-food values in a fast-food world? Of course, it's very, very difficult to do, especially when children have grown up eating fast food and the values that go with that.

If we want children to learn to tend the land and nourish themselves and have conversations at the table, we need to communicate with them in ways that are positive.

We have to bring children into a new relationship to food that connects them to culture and agriculture.

We need to have a course in school that teaches about ecology and gastronomy. I could imagine that all children could eat at school for free and that the cafeteria would become part of the school's curriculum.

Any abuse of animals is the same as abuse of men, women, or children.

Asking questions is what brains were born to do, at least when we were young children. For young children, quite literally, seeking explanations is as deeply rooted a drive as seeking food or water.

Babies and young children are like the research and development division of the human species, and we grown-ups are production and marketing.

Being a developmental psychologist didn't make me any better at dealing with my own children, no. I muddled through, and, believe me, fretted and worried with the best of them.

Childhood is a fundamental part of all human lives, parents or not, since that's how we all start out. And yet babies and young children are so mysterious and puzzling and even paradoxical.

I wanted to answer big questions about humanity, about how it is that we understand about the world, how we can know as much as we do, why human nature is the way that it is. And it always seemed to me that you find answers to those questions by looking at children.

I'm the oldest of six children and I had my own first baby when I was 23. So I've always been interested in babies, and I had lots of opportunities to watch them.

Imaginary friends are one of the weirder forms of pretend play in childhood. But the research shows that imaginary friends actually help children understand the other people around them and imagine all the many ways that people could be.

In most places and times in human history, babies have had not just one person but lots of people around who were really paying attention to them around, dedicated to them, cared to them, were related to them. I think the big shift in our culture is the isolation in which many children are growing up.

Like most parents, I think, my children have been the source of some of my most intense joys and despairs, my deepest moral dilemmas and greatest moral achievements.

One of the best ways of understanding human nature is to study children. After all, if we want understand who we are, we should find out how we got to be that way.

Putting together philosophy and children would have been difficult for most of history. But very fortunately for me, when I started graduate school there was a real scientific revolution taking place in developmental psychology.

Scientists learn about the world in three ways: They analyze statistical patterns in the data, they do experiments, and they learn from the data and ideas of other scientists. The recent studies show that children also learn in these ways.

Teaching is a very effective way to get children to learn something specific - this tube squeaks, say, or a squish then a press then a pull causes the music to play. But it also makes children less likely to discover unexpected information and to draw unexpected conclusions.

Successful creative adults seem to combine the wide-ranging exploration and openness we see in children with the focus and discipline we see in adults.

The real excitement is collaborating with computer scientists and neuroscientists and starting to understand in detail how children learn so much so quickly.

The youngest children have a great capacity for empathy and altruism. There's a recent study that shows even 14-month-olds will climb across a bunch of cushions and go across a room to give you a pen if you drop one.

We do nothing for children between the ages of zero and five. And we seem to be quite happy to have children growing up in not just poverty, which wouldn't be so bad, but isolation, lack of people around them, lack of support, lack of ability to go out and play in the dirt.

We learn differently as children than as adults. For grown-ups, learning a new skill is painful, attention-demanding, and slow. Children learn unconsciously and effortlessly.

What happens when children reach puberty earlier and adulthood later? The answer is: a good deal of teenage weirdness.

We say that children are bad at paying attention, but we really mean that they're bad at not paying attention - they easily get distracted by anything interesting.

Young children seem to be learning who to share this toy with and figure out how it works, while adolescents seem to be exploring some very deep and profound questions: 'How should this society work? How should relationships among people work?' The exploration is: 'Who am I, what am I doing?'

My big chip is that I never had an education. I wanted my children to get one so they didn't fall into the same trap as me.

Can you believe approximately 17 percent of American children ages 2 to 19 years are obese? How about this fact: approximately 60 percent of overweight children ages 5 to 10 already have at least one risk factor for heart disease? We are all to blame for this - parents, schools, kids - all of us.

I have two beautiful children and my husband. The perfect day for me is just to be with them and have fun. We like simple things, you know.

Our pets rely on us entirely for their nutrition. So if you're making your own judgments, that could lead to a mistake. At the same time, we have more control over our pet's diet than we do with our children or with ourselves, so your vet can tell you what is appropriate for your dog and you can assign them that.

Fathers and mothers have lost the idea that the highest aspiration they might have for their children is for them to be wise... specialized competence and success are all that they can imagine.

Rock gives children, on a silver platter, with all the public authority of the entertainment industry, everything their parents always used to tell them they had to wait for until they grew up and would understand later.

There are so many issues in society - we talk about the violence, the drugs, the unwanted pregnancies - but at the end of the day, it comes down to what we taught our children to be.

I loved Dad more for treating the biological reality as trivial, irrelevant. He loved me no less than his other three children.

Always be prepared, always work hard and take pride in your work no matter what it is. I still follow that advice and have already tried to pass it on to my children. They, of course, ignored me.

As a parent with young children, I would always find little things that bothered me when I was reading bedtime stories or watching shows or listening to children's music. I couldn't find any stories, games or television shows that were fun and exciting while also being morally instructive and patriotic.

I was taught that in this country if you work hard, you can do anything, and I don't see a lot of those principles in children's books today.

Children remind us to treasure the smallest of gifts, even in the most difficult of times.

My ideals told me that men and women could both go out to work and be truly equal. My children told me something more complicated, something I really didn't want to hear. Their need for me was like the need for water or light: it had a devastating simplicity to it.

When you have kids, there's a tendency to put the marriage stew on the back burner and give it a quick stir now and then. But it's important to remember why you had children with this person.

When I first got out of school, I went on a children's theater tour, and I went around the country a little bit that fall, and it was the first time I went to Chicago. We spend a couple of days in Chicago, and I was really struck viscerally by the city.

New York offers a bubble out of the literary life that is very useful. We have more time for the children, for the cooking.

A majority, perhaps as many as 75 percent, of abortion clinics are in areas with high minority populations. Abortion apologists will say this is because they want to serve the poor. You don't serve the poor, however, by taking their money to terminate their children.

Our children need to remember to love each other, how to honor each other, their parents, God, and their neighbors.

It's a sad moment, really, when parents first become a bit frightened of their children.

I have no regrets about not having children. I still wait for the pang of guilt, but I have none. I tune into the television show 'Nanny 911' occasionally which reminds me how much patience and love it take to be a good parent.

I didn't want to get divorced, but at the point where your children are part of it, you have to do something. I would really love it not to have happened because it haunts you, it will never go away, and it is probably the biggest failure, and I have to live with that.

I don't think I am a proud person, but I think my children are incredible... I think I am part of that.

I can't imagine what it's like to go through life without shoes to protect your feet, and yet millions of kids do it. That's why TOMS is such an incredible company - it gives shoes to children who need them!

I do know that I think children should be vaccinated because that affects the health of all the other children.

If there were some recipe that would make all of our children really sane and civic-minded and hugely intelligent, I think we'd probably all do it. But I don't know that there is a recipe for creating that.