If you're at school, children who play football, you give everything to win... If you don't succeed, that's a huge disappointment. Then it's okay to be sad, but better times are coming.

If I get the forty additional years statisticians say are likely coming to me, I could fit in at least one, maybe two new lifetimes. Sad that only one of those lifetimes can include being the mother of young children.

We keep racism alive. We pass it on to our children. I think that is very sad.

I am sure that the sad days and happenings were rare, and that I lived the joyous and careless life of other children; but just because the happy days were so habitual to me they made no impression upon my mind, and I can no longer recall them.

And I remember going to the record studio and there was a park across the street and I'd see all the children playing and I would cry because it would make me sad that I would have to work instead.

What man is there, surrounded though he be with the love of wife and children, who does not retain a memory of the romantic affection of boys for each other? Having felt it, he could scarcely have forgotten it, and if he never felt it, he missed one of the most golden of the prizes of youth, unrecapturable in mature life.

Essentially, I spent most of my childhood with my mother and my older sister, and I suppose I had rather a romantic vision of how things might be if there were men around; I saw myself in a country house with six children and a garden. That has never been achieved - and I still regret it.

I'm a hopeless romantic. I love love. My middle name is Love. Valentine's Day is my favorite holiday. I want to have a family and children. I am a sucker for every romantic comedy that comes out.

So many women today have become so focused on their children, they've developed these romantic entanglements with their children's lives, and the husbands are secondary. They're left out. And the romantic focus is on the children.

My mom had this romantic notion of her children playing classical music. The idea is you learn it when you're still learning language. It's using the same part of the brain.

Is Valentine's Day a day to make cupcakes with your children? No, Valentine's is supposed to be a day about romantic love.

And I don't believe that children are innocent. In fact, no one seriously believes that. Just go to a playground and watch the kids playing in the sandbox! The romantic notion of the sweet child is simply the parents projecting their own wishes.

I don't want to be romantic, but one of the most important things is to have happy buildings... it's like having a family with a lot of children.

I think it's time that we all be there for the children, to learn from the ones who came before us, and to teach our sons and daughters to have respect for themselves.

Let's set aside our political and ideological differences and take a moment to love our families, hug our children, parents and grandparents and through love and respect, strengthen the bonds that made us the greatest nation on Earth.

I never wrote for children. I wrote with respect for the audience, which I've maintained all my life. Doesn't mean I couldn't be risque, but I did it smartly, without being vulgar.

Mothers, stay close to your daughters. Earn and deserve their love and respect. Be united with their father in the rearing of your children. Do nothing in your life to cause your daughters to stumble because of your example.

And I think that we in America need to understand that many schools need improvement, and particularly with respect to how they're serving minority children.

I was raised Jewish, my wife was raised Catholic. Though we respect each other's heritage, and while many of our friends are deeply religious, we have chosen to focus on our similarities, not our differences. We teach our children compassion, charity, honesty and the benefits of hard work.

Children need teachers who have stars in their eyes themselves and who treat them with respect.

I like children; I like 'em, and I respect 'em. Pretty much all the honest truth-telling there is in the world is done by them.

I don't do celebrity endorsements. My work with Conservation International is a good use of whatever celebrity I might have to draw attention to important problems. I have the same responsibility as everyone to reduce consumption and to teach children to respect the environment.

My mother imparted on me that I must be a good custodian of my father's name and that is what I ask of my children. One should conduct themselves in the correct manner, respect one's elders and do the right thing.

I don't think writers are sacred, but words are. They deserve respect. If you get the right ones in the right order, you can nudge the world a little or make a poem which children will speak for you when you're dead.