Baz Lurhmann

My daughter hasn’t seen me with anybody in five years. I’m very, very selective when it comes to that because I want to make sure that it’s real. I don’t want her to see me with just anybody because she means everything to me.

I owe much to mother. She had an expert’s understanding, but also approached art emotionally.

Family not only need to consist of merely those whom we share blood, but also for those whom we’d give blood.

I learned another thing from the hurt my cousin gave me – never to give that kind of hurt to anyone else. My revenge was to change a bad feeling into a good one. If I’m working with you and I sense you’re feeling a little insecure, I try to make you feel great. That’s how I get rid of my old hurt. If I don’t do that, my hurt grows and makes me mean and vengeful. But if hurt can change to kindness – that’s something Mama showed me – the world becomes a little less cruel.

You have to love your children unselfishly. That is hard. But it is the only way.

How do people make it through life without a sister?

Your parents leave you too soon and your kids and spouse come along late, but your siblings know you when you are in your most inchoate form. – Jeffrey Kluger

I want my sons to grow up in a world where they’d never think boys are better than girls or that black is better than white.

The times when Barack and I are at our most relaxed are when we invite some friends over who we have known forever. And you put a little music on top of that? Some good food? It renews your spirit to get back in the game.

You don’t choose your family. They are God’s gift to you, as you are to them.

[On his mother’s adversity] She had a very difficult beginning… All of my mothers family were killed… and she came to America at the time of the depression. It was not an easy life at all.

The quality of a father can be seen in the goals, dreams and aspirations he sets not only for himself, but for his family.

Siblings – the definition that comprises love, strife, competition and forever friends.

I was probably 10 or 11 when I saw that, and sort of started thinking, ‘You know what? Marriage is an option. Having a family is an option. And going to school and getting your education and building your career is another really viable option that can lead to happiness and fulfillment.

I learned in those eight years is that home is where you make it, and we were in the White House for eight years, but it wasn’t the house. It was us in it. It was our value and our love for each other.