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

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

When you become senile, you won't know it.

Human beings are the only creatures on earth that allow their children to come back home.

The truth is that parents are not really interested in justice. They just want quiet.

You can turn painful situations around through laughter. If you can find humor in anything, even poverty, you can survive it.

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.

Always end the name of your child with a vowel, so that when you yell the name will carry.

Like everyone else who makes the mistake of getting older, I begin each day with coffee and obituaries.

The past is a ghost, the future a dream, and all we ever have is now.

Let us now set forth one of the fundamental truths about marriage: the wife is in charge.

Men and women belong to different species and communications between them is still in its infancy.

The heart of marriage is memories; and if the two of you happen to have the same ones and can savor your reruns, then your marriage is a gift from the gods.

I am certainly not an authority on love because there are no authorities on love, just those who've had luck with it and those who haven't.

Civilization had too many rules for me, so I did my best to rewrite them.

The essence of childhood, of course, is play, which my friends and I did endlessly on streets that we reluctantly shared with traffic.

As I have discovered by examining my past, I started out as a child. Coincidentally, so did my brother. My mother did not put all her eggs in one basket, so to speak: she gave me a younger brother named Russell, who taught me what was meant by 'survival of the fittest.'

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

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

A word to the wise ain't necessary - it's the stupid ones that need the advice.

If the new American father feels bewildered and even defeated, let him take comfort from the fact that whatever he does in any fathering situation has a fifty percent chance of being right.

Gray hair is God's graffiti.

That married couples can live together day after day is a miracle that the Vatican has overlooked.

No matter how calmly you try to referee, parenting will eventually produce bizarre behavior, and I'm not talking about the kids. Their behavior is always normal.

There is no labor a person does that is undignified; if they do it right.

There is hope for the future because God has a sense of humor and we are funny to God.

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.

Nothing separates the generations more than music. By the time a child is eight or nine, he has developed a passion for his own music that is even stronger than his passions for procrastination and weird clothes.

Even though your kids will consistently do the exact opposite of what you're telling them to do, you have to keep loving them just as much.

Old is always fifteen years from now.

Decide that you want it more than you are afraid of it.

Immortality is a long shot, I admit. But somebody has to be first.

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

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

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

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

Women don't want to hear what you think. Women want to hear what they think - in a deeper voice.

Having a child is surely the most beautifully irrational act that two people in love can commit.

You know the only people who are always sure about the proper way to raise children? Those who've never had any.

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

I am proud to be an American. Because an American can eat anything on the face of this earth as long as he has two pieces of bread.

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.

Any man today who returns from work, sinks into a chair, and calls for his pipe is a man with an appetite for danger.

Through humor, you can soften some of the worst blows that life delivers. And once you find laughter, no matter how painful your situation might be, you can survive it.

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.

I guess the real reason that my wife and I had children is the same reason that Napoleon had for invading Russia: it seemed like a good idea at the time.

For college seniors there should be a week of being allowed to cry. Just break down and cry because you are scared and don't know what's next.

I want all this loud profanity in the street stopped. I want people to think about choices.

When I say, I don't care what white people think, I mean that.

There are some people who have trouble recognizing a mess.

If you speak your mind and if it is true what you're saying, then I think the integrity of what you're saying carries through.

Family is conflict and it's something that we all relate to.

When I was a boy if a girl got pregnant the shame was placed on her and the boy could get away.

I think the part of media that romanticizes criminal behavior, things that a person will say against women, profanity, being gangster, having multiple children with multiple men and women and not wanting to is prevalent. When you look at the majority of shows on television they placate that kind of behavior.

If you have no faith, you've lost your battle.

When a person has a gun, sometimes their mind clicks that this thing will win arguments and straighten people out.

We've got to get the gun out of the hands of people who are supposed to be on neighborhood watch.

When you carry a gun, you mean to harm somebody, kill somebody.

Social networking helps reach people easier and quicker.

I'm old, not dead.