The patriot blood of my father was warm in my veins.

I'm torn about late parenting. I believe people should spend their twenties living and having fun and not having any regrets later. I also think people in their thirties generally make better parents but so many of my friends are having trouble - myself included - as fathers get older.

My childhood should have taught me lessons for my own fatherhood but it didn't because parenting can only be learned by people who have no children.

My father was a farmer and my mother was a farmer but my childhood was very good. I am very grateful for my childhood because it was full of gladness and good humanity.

We criticize mothers for closeness. We criticize fathers for distance. How many of us have expected less from our fathers and appreciated what they gave us more? How many of us always let them off the hook?

I get whatever placidity I have from my father. But my mother taught me how to take it on the chin.

I don't think children's inner feelings have changed. They still want a mother and father in the very same house they want places to play.

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.

No fathers or mothers think their own children ugly.

My mother protected me from the world and my father threatened me with it.

Most American children suffer too much mother and too little father.

How pleasant it is for a father to sit at his child's board. It is like an aged man reclining under the shadow of an oak which he has planted.

A new father quickly learns that his child invariably comes to the bathroom at precisely the times when he's in there as if he needed company. The only way for this father to be certain of bathroom privacy is to shave at the gas station.

I cannot think of any need in childhood as strong as the need for a father's protection.

I think that the best way to explain that is that my mother gave me all the color and character and flare and liveliness and my father gave me all the sanity and nature and all the things that helped me be a more rounded human being.

Every girl should use what Mother Nature gave her before Father Time takes it away.

What I took back because of my exposure to the Jewish music of the 30s and the 40s in my upbringing with my father was that kind of theatrical songwriting. It was always a part of my character. This desire to make people laugh.

I've spent hours and hours doing research into Appalachian folk music. My grandfather was a fiddler. There is something very immediate very simple and emotional about that music.

My father was a minister and so rock music was banned in our house.

It is a wise tune that knows its own father and I like my music to be the legitimate offspring of respectable parents.

My father used to sing to me in my mother's womb. I think I can name about any tune in two beats.

The all-seeing eye of God beheld our deplorable state infinite pity touched the heart of the Father of mercies and infinite wisdom laid the plan of our recovery.

Obviously I love 'The Godfather' movies. I think they're phenomenal.

The novel succeeds on terms exclusive to literature. A good film succeeds on terms exclusive to the cinema. That's why so many bad novels can become good movies like 'Jaws' or 'The Godfather.'