“Small children do not belong at an adult party, and especially should not be used like trained midgets to help serve martinis.”

It would be nice to feel that we are a better world, a world of more compassion and a world of more humanity, and to believe in the basic goodness of man.

For Castro, freedom starts with education. And if literacy alone were the yardstick, Cuba would rank as one of the freest nations on Earth.

I didn’t get ahead by sleeping with people. Girls, take heart!

I don’t know about you, but I can never get enough David Letterman.

Don’t let the bastards get you down.

Parents of young children should realize that few people, and maybe no one, will find their children as enchanting as they do.

Celebrities used to be found in clusters, like oysters – and with much the same defensive mechanisms.

Children are God’s way of punishing us for having sex.

A conversation isn’t a competition.

The origin of a modern party is anthropological: humans meet and share food to lower hostility between them and indicate friendship.

When your child is in trouble, the first thing you do is blame yourself.

But for Muslims, everything that they don’t have on earth is what they get in heaven. They can drink, they can have sex. All of the forbidden pleasures on earth, you can have in paradise.

For a man who likes to talk, Fidel Castro does very few interviews.

The hardest thing you will ever do is trust yourself.

A job is not a career. I think I started out with a job. It turned into a career and changed my life.

A Hot Fudge Sundae and a trashy novel is my idea of heaven.

I looked on child rearing not only as a work of love and duty but as a profession that was fully as interesting and challenging as any honorable profession in the world and one that demanded the best that I could bring to it.

I think you should be a child for as long as you can. I have been successful for 74 years being able to do that.

I have always been the kid who’s asked ‘Why?’ In my faith, you’re just supposed to have faith. But I was always like, why?

Above all, except the wife and children, I want to see my books.

All Children Have Brain Damage!

Your children need your presence more than your presents.

Don’t limit a child to your own learning, for she was born in another time.

There’s no such thing as a tough child – if you parboil them first for seven hours, they always come out tender.