Barba Bush

Believe in something larger than yourself…get involved in the big ideas of your time.

Bias has to be taught. If you hear your parents downgrading women or people of different backgrounds, why, you are going to do that.

Cherish your human connections – your relationships with friends and family.

Some people give time, some money, some their skills and connections, some literally give their life’s blood. But everyone has something to give.

Giving frees us from the familiar territory of our own needs by opening our mind to the unexplained worlds occupied by the needs of others.

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

People say: “Oh yeah, jobs for the boys”. I wish. You’ve got to fight even harder with a family like mine.

I am lucky because my family are comfortably off. My father has his own glass business.

You leave home to seek your fortune and when you get it, you go home and share it with your family.

My grandma is probably the only person on this planet that I still remember their home number by heart

Once I became a mother I knew that I was strong, but not ready to do what I’m doing now

I’ve known people that was a part of a family and always feel that the family liked everyone else but them. That hurts, and that’s as deep a hurt as you can possibly get. I’ve known people that would have problems with their love life. This is kind of how blues began – out of feeling misused, mistreated. Feeling like they had nobody to turn to. Blues don’t necessarily have to be sung by a person that came from Mississippi as I did, because there are people having problems all over the world.

I have to be in tune with my husband, where he is, how he’s feeling. I have to be in tune with where my family is. The same thing is true in the work that I do. It’s all about me feeling where people are. So that’s why I try to be really present, even when I’m on a rope line. I never take for granted my interactions with people. And it’s never black-and-white. I’m usually reading the crowd, reading the people that I’m with. I guess if this role has changed me, it’s improved my ability to do that. I’ve gotten better at sensing where people are at any given time.

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.

How do you build a relationship when you’ve hardly shared a word but suddenly share a child? How do you love a daughter you don’t see for nearly two years? When does she become your daughter? How does she become your daughter?

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

I’ve been a loner all the time throughout my life… I haven’t been the best father… Many times… my children have accused me of not giving them enough attention. And, frankly, I never have been good at handling that.

There was a lot of charm in just living in a big family compound of a house. My two uncles, who were into jazz, lived in the basement, and one of them, Uncle Peter, taught me my first songs on the ukulele.

We let Willow cut her hair. When you have a little girl, it’s like, how can you teach her that your in control of her body? If I teach her that I’m in charge of whether or not she can touch her hair, she’s going to replace me with some other man when she goes out into the world. She can’t cut my hair, but that’s her hair. She has got to have command over her body. So when she goes out into the world, she goes out with command that it’s hers. She is used to making those decisions herself. We try to keep giving them those decisions until they can hold the full weight of their lives.

Nothing can stop me from loving my brother.

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.