Harold Perrineau Quotes

I've found it easier to write, to coalesce my thoughts, since having children. It brings you back to what you experienced yourself as a child, and you empathize with what your parents went through.

My mother was not without her flaws. She did have a lot of flaws, but she revealed her strength and her flaws equally, and I think that's really important. I was very much influenced by that.

And my daughter said, 'Why are you yelling at us?' and I said, 'I'm trying to discipline you!' And then she looked up at me with her tear-stained eyes and said, 'This is how you teach children, by making them cry.' And it was such a clenching reminder - she won not only the argument, but she won life with that statement. I just burst out laughing, and I think they were so surprised that I burst out laughing, that they did too.

I try to listen to my children. I try to change with my children.

But it took me awhile to figure out Christine at this age, you know.

My mum was too busy raising four of us to encourage my hopes. But I'm glad I had the upbringing I did. It made me a worrier and a thoughtful, curious person.

For me, becoming a man had a lot to do with learning communication, and I learned about that by acting.

The surprising thing about fatherhood was finding my inner mush. Now I want to share it with the world.

The biggest lesson I've learned from my children is to look in the mirror at myself, not at them. I've realized that everything I've done has had an impact on them. We have to understand that they are like little paparazzi. They take our picture when we don't want them to and then they show it to us in their behavior.

Writing songs helped me figure out how to communicate with other people. I finally figured out that if I could express something in a song, I could probably express it in my real life, too.

I can definitely say the older I've got the better I've become at being a dad and a husband.

The parent is the strongest statement that the child hears regarding what it means to be alive and real. More than what we say or do, the way we are expresses what we think it means to be alive. So the articulate parent is less a telling than a listening individual.

As I've gotten to know myself over the years, I realised I'm kind of a sweet, sensitive guy, a shy guy, and communication is not something I'm so good at.

It's my deepest interest as an actor: I love discovering how human beings work, how their flaws reveal themselves - how to learn and grow from that - and how characters teach me things as a woman and as a parent.

Being in relationship with others helps us know ourselves better.

I was the 'no one understands me' teenager. But I think truly I've realized now that I didn't understand a thing myself. So I just had some livin' to do.

I found being a coach in 'The Ultimate Fighter' series hard because I had to care about others. I don't feel a lot of empathy with others. Having kids is going to be a scary one for me - I guess I'm going to have to learn.

We are here to love, not to judge. I'd been blaming and raging. I certainly wasn't loving my daughter that afternoon as God loves me. God's love doesn't insist on perfection or even good common sense. Why then should I demand more of those I love? With this tiny change in perspective I began to see the need for correction wasn't in my daughter, but in me.

When my son came into my life, my priorities changed, because I wanted to have the relationship with him, that I didn't have with my father.

Whoever can weep over himself for one hour is greater than the one who is able to teach the whole world; whoever recognizes the depth of his own frailty is greater than the one who sees visions of angels.

The more you understand yourself, the more you will understand the world.

And no one will listen to us until we listen to ourselves.

Realizing that my children are the center of the universe and not me is probably one of the greatest ways to acclimatize.

A parent who has never apologized to his children is a monster. If he's always apologizing, his children are monsters.

Our natural thing to do when we break away from our parents and our family is to decide in how many ways they were wrong and bad, and the older you get you start to realize, "By 'bad' I mean 'different'" and then you get a little bit older and you think, "And by 'different' I mean 'pretty awesome but just not like me.'"