Children's games constitute the most admirable social institutions. The game of marbles, for instance, as played by boys, contains an extremely complex system of rules - that is to say, a code of laws, a jurisprudence of its own.
I think that technology - computers and smart phones and 24-hour availability - often leaves me, and others I know, feeling blank and depressed at the end of a day. I also believe that hyped expectations for raising children leaves many women and men feeling as if their days are a blur of carpools and play-groups and tutors.
Mothers of all ages delight in their children, but I don't know that, if I were younger, I would feel as acutely, profoundly, preciously grateful for every smile, squeal, and - yes - diaper blowout.
Moderating a debate means spending more time with briefing books than with your children. It means writing and rewriting and rephrasing. It means finding a way to be alert enough to notice when your question goes unanswered and nimble enough to decide what you will do about that on the spot.
Sometimes when I'm watching television and something, an image, will come on that has to do with 9/11 or some of these families telling their stories, or children talking about drawing pictures of airplanes flying into towers, you know, I find myself still choking up.
Growing up in New York, I was sort of shocked when I realized that my children are Californians. They are 14 years old, and I explain to them frequently that they will never realize the glory of a snow day. You wake up and the world says, 'Oops, it's too much fun to go to school, you've got to stay home and deal with the snow!'
When you're an established name, you know that a children's book will have a pretty good chance of getting picked up. Like Madonna. It's not that I had this great idea. Actually, in my case, it was a great idea.
I believe it is my responsibility to do what I can for children and people with Down syndrome as well as in my native Dominican Republic.
While we can remember the past, we cannot write the future. Only our children, the future of our community, can do that.
I'm not sure I have a role model per se, but I do deeply admire every woman who raises children and has to walk for water.
Puritanical attempts to cure society by taking toys away from children are hypocritical and futile.
There is a myth that writers get to choose their stories. You don't get to choose your story any more than you get to choose your children. You can make the decision to write, but beyond that, at the end of the day, it's going to come out how it's going to come out.
I'm the oldest of six children and I had my own first baby when I was 23. So I've always been interested in babies, and I had lots of opportunities to watch them.
There are a lot of young people out there who need to start using their idle time in a positive way. Parents need to play an important role in making sure their children succeed in school.
I believe that children have to grow up as all-round personalities, but it cannot be at the cost of academics.
A lesser complaint: hair extensions. There are moments on 'All My Children' when half the women actors, young and old, seem to be afflicted by android Barbie creep. All those thick swatches of lifeless strands clustering lankly round ladies' necks! Like orange tanning spray, this is a fashion fad that should be put out of its misery.
Outside of interviews, I spend very little time thinking about myself. I spend time thinking about my writing and my children and other things that are pertinent.
I shall produce nothing that will offend the proprieties, whether applied to children or grownups. My pictures are turned out with clean hands and, therefore, with a clear conscience which, like virtue, is its own reward.
As fathers, we all have great lessons to teach our children.
If I wasn't acting, I would probably be working with children. I was a camp counselor growing up and I loved it.
Walter Cronkite was a personally decent and convivial man, who literally couldn't kill a fly, was kind to his children, generally helpful to juniors, authentically curious about the news, and, in his time, an energetic reporter.
There are things I read doing research, and there are certain books and writers I just love to read. There are books of Brian Morten's that I love, for instance. There's a wonderful book by an Australian writer named Helen Garner called 'The Children's Bach,' and I just love the way she uses language in it.
The wealthiest Sudanese don't know what war is. Their children are safe in school.
I don't appreciate Internet cyber bullying at all. It's not fair. With me, it gets hard because I have four children. My 8 year old son reads lies about his father, when I'm his hero.
My children don't look Hispanic.
Most men are far younger when they have their children and they're building their careers. If they are older they probably don't have the luxury of retiring - and generally sixty something-year-old men don't choose to have a child and spend all their time with that child. So it was a very unique situation.
Most children tell themselves stories in which they figure as powerful figures, enjoying the pleasures not only of the adult world as they conceive it but of a world of wonders unlike dull reality.
I distributed my wealth among my children and set aside a portion for endowment to run charity projects.
I suppose it's amazing how quick life goes by when you have children.
You cannot properly bring up children when you are 69 or 70 and they are 12 and at the height of their madness. You can physically do it, but I don't think it's morally justified.
My only reason why I am not doing films is my children. My children need my attention, and it's my duty to give them my time. I have not given birth to them to just dump them and go off to work. I am not that kind of a person.
When you've got children, it's easy to do that thing of keeping a tally of who woke up earliest and whose turn it is to put them to bed. But I think the important thing is to appreciate and love each other and to show that appreciation.
Whenever I'm given a chance to support veterans' initiatives, I try to do that. Children and veterans - if they're involved, you can pretty much count me in.
When I was young and the empire was beginning to disintegrate, the idea was absolutely unbelievable, particularly to children who'd been taught that the sun never set... that's what all my books are about, the end of empire.
I went to a number of foreign countries, and during whenever I went, I would try to go to an orphanage or a home for children. And I was seeing thousands of kids around the world that needed homes.
Emotional grandeur, rendered in the vernacular, has been Mona Simpson's forte. In her novels, 'Anywhere but Here,' 'The Lost Father' and 'A Regular Guy,' Simpson wrote wide and long and high about the most profound human bonds: parents and children lost each other, found each other, lost each other again, but differently.
