You leave home to seek your fortune and, when you get it, you go home and share it with your family.

You leave home to seek your fortune and, when you get it, you go home and share it with your family.

I would say that my peak was making my first million at the ripe age of 29, after the first album.

Completeness? Happiness? These words don't come close to describing my emotions. There truly is nothing I can say to capture what motherhood means to me, particularly given my medical history.

Long tresses down to the floor can be beautiful, if you have that, but learn to love what you have.

Applause felt like approval, and it became a drug that soothed the pain, but only temporarily.

We don't do drugs, drink or use profanity. Instead we instill morals and values in my boys by raising them with a love of God and a love and respect for themselves and all people. I believe they will have a chance.

I don't let people use me. That's why I like a small number of people in my life. The more people in my life, the more complex it becomes, so I just try to keep it at a minimum.

I'm picking and choosing in terms of the stress factor. If it's not fun, I'm not going to do it.

As soon as you get off stage, that's the most dangerous time for a singer to kiss people because your vocal chords are receptive to any kind of germ.

Chris Brown is brilliant. That cat is crazy brilliant, and I wish him the best.

Historically, in my generation, all of my heroes and heroines have had issues and problems. We all do.

I don't think being black has held me back at all. Being black makes you strong.

I made numerous attempts to find a way to do it all, to be a creative singer, songwriter, producer, and to be the mother, daughter, sister, lover, wife. And the thing about music is, with me, that she's a harsh mistress. She does not come to me in the midst of stress.

I need my career. That's what validates me.

I think there's no sacrifice too great for family, whether it's career, singing, whatever.

I used to sing at funeral homes for families that didn't have a vocalist. I didn't get paid. I needed to sing.

I would make far more money if every song were my own, but I don't write to fill up the album with my songs.

I'd love to be the political voice of my generation, but that's not my gift.

I'm used to getting up at 7, getting breakfast, getting the kids off to school, and doing the mommy thing and the wife thing and the daughter thing.

If I could be doing anything, I'd be laying on the floor in my birthday suit eating junk food and watching something dumb on TV.

If you have your own agenda and your own style and you don't easily conform to what the masses are doing, you're looked upon as being difficult. Whereas, I think of it as just being an individual.

It's impossible to write and produce a record when your parents are dying. I really tried, I really, really tried, but it just wouldn't come.

Most artists are notoriously insecure, and I fall into that category.

My father worked on assembly lines in Detroit while I was growing up. Every day, I watched him do what he needed to do to support the family. But he told me, 'Life is short. Do what you want to do.'

Oh my goodness, they are rocking so many variations of my high-top fade. I mean, Rihanna has taken it to a very angular 21st Century thing. Miss Fantasia has it in a very seductive, you know, up-flip, and it's just lovely, right? Oh, I think it's wonderful.

Time has nothing to do with the gifts that the gods give you; it's what you do.

You leave home to seek your fortune and when you get it you go home and share it with your family.

Young actors often don't think of the consequences of doing nudity or sex scenes. They want the role so badly that they agree to be exploited, and then end up embarrassing family, friends, and even strangers.

On the road to equality there is no better place for blacks to detour around American values than in forgoing its example in the treatment of its women and the organization of its family.

We're parents first, and once you have kids, everybody knows that you have priority lists. Number one is your family and everything else just kind of finds its place.

I have a project at HBO and one at the Family Channel coming that are being looked at. Aside from that I am not doing much more than playing golf and some skiing.

I didn't tell anybody about my plan because I was convinced my family or friends would stop me. I didn't think much about what would happen afterwards.

You know raising a family in the lifestyle of a professional athlete can be very difficult.

I love to see my family together. That's what life is about. It's about family.

Like religion, politics, and family planning, cereal is not a topic to be brought up in public. It's too controversial.

It was an idea we had when Al was in the Senate - to organize and moderate an annual conference that would look at government policy through the lens of the family to help identify ways that the family can be supported and strengthened.

Even though we were all celebrities to a certain extent, we all looked at each other as family.

The steady expansion of welfare programs can be taken as a measure of the steady disintegration of the Negro family structure over the past generation in the United States.

A growing awareness of the depth of popular attachment to the family has led some liberals to concede that family is not just a buzzword for reaction.

I love my family.

I have other obligations now - the show, my family, my life... though I know that without my sobriety I wouldn't have any of those things.

When they were small and my wife really had no other responsibilities, except taking care of the family and all of us, it wasn't that big a deal. It was fun. Hey, we're going to Moscow. We're going to Italy. We're going to Toronto. We're going to New York.

I miss my family, and I like being a tourist when I go back.

I'm not in the business of becoming famous. And that's the advice I give to younger aspiring actors. Work onstage and do the little roles. In the end it's not important to be seen. It's important to do. There's a lot of disappointment in this business, but my family keeps me grounded.

The last three decades have seen the collapse of the family wage system.

I have continued systematically to study the Book of Mormon and Bible to understand even more deeply what God expects of me and my family while on this earth.

When I finally gave up any hope of doing anything representative of the American family, I actually seemed to have tapped into other people's weirdness in that way.

Leave the matter of religion to the family altar, the church, and the private school, supported entirely by private contributions. Keep the church and state forever separate.