“Like everyone else who makes the mistake of getting older, I begin each day with coffee and obituaries.”
“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.”
“Civilization had too many rules for me, so I did my best to rewrite them.”
“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.”
“Sex education may be a good idea in the schools, but I don't believe the kids should be given homework.”
“I cannot understand how the education of this United States of America has been fooled time and time again. Either make it separate but equal or integrate, therefore it will be equal. And it has been separate and unequal.”
“In order to succeed, your desire for success should be greater than your fear of failure.”
“I don't know the key to success, but the key to failure is trying to please everybody.”
“If you have no faith, you've lost your battle.”
“The first-born in every family is always dreaming for an imaginary older brother or sister who will look out for them.”
“Family is conflict and it's something that we all relate to.”
“Did you ever see the customers in health - food stores? They are pale, skinny people who look half - dead. In a steak house, you see robust, ruddy people. They're dying, of course, but they look terrific.”
“People can be more forgiving than you can imagine. But you have to forgive yourself. Let go of what's bitter and move on.”
“A word to the wise ain't necessary - it's the stupid ones that need the advice.”
“Always end the name of your child with a vowel, so that when you yell the name will carry.”
“Fatherhood is pretending the present you love most is soap-on-a-rope.”
“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.”
“The main goal of the future is to stop violence. The world is addicted to it.”
“Gray hair is God's graffiti.”
“I don't have a problem believing in God and Jesus. But in Genesis one has to wonder about these sentences that just go on and end without finishing. The thought is unfinished. Where did Adam go? What is he doing? Hello? There has to be some pages missing.”
“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.”
“Human beings are the only creatures on earth that allow their children to come back home.”
“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.”
“You can turn painful situations around through laughter. If you can find humor in anything, even poverty, you can survive it.”
“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.”
“Having a child is surely the most beautifully irrational act that two people in love can commit.”
“I often try to tell kids to think about all the people who love you, don't cry over the one person who doesn't.”
“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.”
“We're not raising children with the love that we need to.”
“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.”
“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.”
“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.”
“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.”
“The truth is that parents are not really interested in justice. They just want quiet.”
“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.”
“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.”
“Parents are not interested in justice, they're interested in peace and quiet.”
“Every success story has a parent who says, 'over my dead body.' Every success story has an old person who walks up to you and says, when you're acting the fool, 'you know I worry about you sometimes.'”
“Women don't want to hear what you think. Women want to hear what they think - in a deeper voice.”
“Any man today who returns from work, sinks into a chair, and calls for his pipe is a man with an appetite for danger.”