A friend suggested that I get a job at a children's book store so I could meet kids and read books, and that turned out to be the single best bit of advice I've ever gotten.
If the White House could do more to tell parents that getting children reading is their business too, we'd see a big difference. Hollywood and the NBA or NFL could step in, too. In England they have an event called Book Day, where every child receives a pound to use at any bookstore.
If I didn't have children I might be more of a lush than I am. I like booze. I struggle with smoking. And I'm a big swearer. I'm trying to rein it in but I do think it's a nice seasoning of language.
Bore children, and they stop reading. There's no room for self-indulgence or showing off or setting the scene.
God has no grandchildren. He has only children, so being a born-again Christian is not an automatic thing.
I have children, and this notion - that there might be a single book that introduces children to literature - terrifies me. But you could do worse than Mary Norton's 'The Borrowers.' I loved it as a kid, and my kids love it, too.
And if you are a parent, introduce your children to their neighborhood library. It will give them a real sense of independence to have their own library card and enjoy borrowing books.
In Bosnia, little children shot in the head by a guy who thinks it's okay to aim his gun at a child.
Before I became a SEAL, I'd done humanitarian work around the world - with refugee families in Bosnia, with unaccompanied children in Rwanda, with kids who lost limbs to land mines in Cambodia.
If a child from an Amazonian hunter-gatherer tribe comes to Boston, is raised in Boston, that child will be indistinguishable in language capacities from my children growing up here, and vice versa.
The World War I, I'm a child of World War I. And I really know about the children of war. Because both my parents were both badly damaged by the war. My father, physically, and both mentally and emotionally. So, I know exactly what it's like to be brought up in an atmosphere of a continual harping on the war.
The American people are tired of being told. They're tired of being told that this is as good as it gets. They're tired of hearing politicians in both parties tell us that we'll get to that tomorrow while we pile a mountain range of debt on our children and our grandchildren.
Rich kids gave us their old clothes. They were the best clothes we ever had. We were these very pure, naive, poor children. The rich kids called us a lot of names but it never bothered us because we didn't know what the words meant.
I tried Botox one time and was permanently surprised for a couple of months. It was not a cute look for me. My feeling is, I have three children who should know what emotion I'm feeling at the exact moment I'm feeling it... that is critical.
Tranquilizers work only if you follow the advice on the bottle - keep away from children.
If all the rich and all of the church people should send their children to the public schools they would feel bound to concentrate their money on improving these schools until they met the highest ideals.
As the father of eight children, I'm quite convinced that each individual arrives here with their own unique personality. We are intended here from an invisible held of infinite potentiality. That which has no form, has no boundaries - it's the I that's in the ever-changing body.
It is fortunate, I think, that nature is not bounded by human reason and by laboratory work and experimentation, for by the laws of pure reason and by microscopic investigation, it might easily have been proved, long before this, that children could not be born.
Keep me away from the wisdom which does not cry, the philosophy which does not laugh and the greatness which does not bow before children.
Having children is like having a bowling alley installed in your brain.
