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

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

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."

Sex education may be a good idea in the schools, but I don't believe the kids should be given homework.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

Old is always fifteen years from now.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

Parents are not interested in justice, they're interested in peace and quiet.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

Gray hair is God's graffiti.