Byron Pulsifer

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

Growing up, I was taught that a man has to defend his family. When the wolf is trying to get in, you gotta stand in the doorway. He has to get through you first before he gets into the house to get your family. I’m one of those guys who wants to be in that door.

The debt of gratitude we owe our mother and father goes forward, not backward. What we owe our parents is the bill presented to us by our children.

The family is very important. They make me feel good always because if I won, when I started to be famous, the relationship never changed with my friends and family.

Our brothers and sisters are there with us from the dawn of our personal stories to the inevitable dusk.

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

When I get up and work out, I’m working out just as much for my girls as I am for me, because I want them to see a mother who loves them dearly, who invests in them, but who also invests in herself. It’s just as much about letting them know as young women that it is okay to put yourself a little higher on your priority list.

When your children arrive, your heart becomes a room with wide open windows.

As children we recognized that we belonged to an unusual, even exceptional, family, but the effect was different on each of us.

My father would always praise me. He always thought I was the smartest person

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.

I’ve always wanted to be a mom at 23, 24ish, ever since I was a little girl. I’m right on schedule.

Maybe that’s all that family really is, a group of people who all miss the same imaginary place.

It’s incredible watching my son grow up and learn to read, discover the world and test boundaries. Being a mum is the greatest joy of my life, definitely.

My parents were neither very poor nor conspicuously honest.