J. J. Abrams Quotes

I notice that my characters go out to dinner and have fun and take these great trips, but I spend so much time on their lives, I don't have much of a personal life of my own. I have to sort of remember to fill out that little notebook on me.

I'm just a normal mother with the same struggles as any other mother who's trying to do everything at once and trying to be a wife and maintain a relationship. There's absolutely nothing perfect about my life, but I just try hard.

I built a studio in my house so I can be with my kids. I go out to my approval meetings [for my collection] while they nap, but at least I can sing [at home] while they sleep at night.

Having kids has been a fantastic thing for me. It's meant that I'm a little more balanced. In my twenties I worked massively, hardly took vacation at all. Now, I, with the help of my wife, I'm always making sure I've got a good balance of how I spend my time.

I'm very grateful to have my kids in my life; they're my greatest teachers. But to pretend it's always easy is just not really true.

I'm working from home a lot. That's very unusual because I'm away a lot, sometimes working on the other side of the world for long periods of time. So, it's hard to manage in the sense that I want to be the best dad I can be but it's almost harder when you have your kids outside the door.

I'm putting out music that I love, and they're basically just stories of my life and how I try and teach myself to think about things. They're kind of like notes to self, basically.

I like to have fun, but I don't have a lot of time for myself. I do have eight kids!

I'm not the best person to analyze any kind of evolution in my work, but I do feel like it's been an ongoing struggle to basically teach myself how to tell the kinds of stories that interest me in comics form.

In many cases, the joy and honor of having a home has lifted people into a spirit of determination to try and achieve a better life for themselves and their families.

I used to try to write around the edges, but now I try to walk a more direct line.

When 'The Road To Hell' happened, I didn't know what I was doing. Your diary fills up, and you have no objectivity. At home, you're trying your best to fit in. Sometimes I'd race from Heathrow to find myself sitting in a village hall watching my kids. It felt really weird. I didn't enjoy it.

I didn't miss out on a family life because of racing. I had one because of it.

When I didn't have a family, I was much more of a workaholic. I still like to work, but I also want to be home with them. As you get older, you realize you need balance. If it's not fun, what's the point?

Most mothers entering the labor market outside the home are naive. They stagger home each evening, holding mail in their teeth, the cleaning over their arm, a lamb chop defrosting under each armpit, balancing two gallons of frozen milk between their knees, and expect one of the kids to get the door.

While the average person is home watching TV, the Leader Without a Title is in the gym getting stronger or at the library getting smarter or at the office getting better (or with their family growing kinder). Make this day count.

I guess for me, balance isn't about treating your time like a pie chart and dividing it into equally sized slices for you, the kids, work, and so on. It's about the quality of how you spend your time, not the quantity--are you being present and focused on whatever you're doing while you're doing it? I truly believe that's how you can be the best version of yourself, whether you're in work mode, mom mode, or wife mode. When I know I'm giving my undivided attention in each of these areas, I don't feel so guilty about the time spent away from them.

We're in an era where they've sanitized home life in movies to such a degree that there is a certain home life that might be true if you have two perfect parents, and a nanny, and a couple babysitters, and support, and lots of money, and there's no strain at home, or whatever. But for most people, there's strain, you know? There's a lot of pressure, things can't be perfect, parents can't be perfect all the time. There's a divorce, there's money issues, whatever. People work, so you don't always have these vast reserves of patience every time your kid goes crazy.

Unfortunately, daily routine is the last thing I have with all three kids, family life, work, foundation, and the amount of travel that I do! So truly, what I try to do to keep myself centered is take breaths in between and before I start a new thing throughout the day.

I think the most significant work we'll do in our whole life, in our whole world is done within the four walls of our home.

It's weird people think my kids will be in therapy because of their names. Guys, my kids will be therapy for LOTS of reasons, I'm sure.

The challenges that I face today are the same challenges we all face. Trying to balance your life between work, family, loved ones, your husband, your wife - boyfriend or girlfriend. If you have kids - balancing that, balancing your work with the time you spend with your kids. The idea of wanting to be a good parent and then the motivation to be a great parent. Whether you're black, white, any color. Rich, poor, regardless of religion, cousins of culture, we go through those. We have the same challenges.

Most people in the world have seen more of me on-screen than my kids have.

Today the problem that has no name is how to juggle work, love, home and children.

When I knew I was going to be able to write full time, I wondered, "What's going to happen to the relationships within my family?" Are they going to change? Is it going to be the kind of deal where you say, "I can't take this! Get me out of here! I can't stand these screaming kids!" The way it turned out was, I was able to change the diapers okay, after I stuck the pin through my fingers a few times. I had a dawning realization that children are not particularly hard to deal with.