Stanley Clarke Quotes

I was always going to make music, but I cleaned up my act a lot just to be a good dad and a husband. That sort of changed my career professionally, too.

What I want in my career is different to what I wanted when I was 21. It's got to be something that keeps my family together, that allows me to be present in their lives.

With my daughter, who at the time was one, my domestic life needed to take more precedent and really with my own self I needed to develop quite a bit more. So that put Blur down the list of priorities quite a lot by the time I came to thinking about it.

I had a family, I had children, I got married. My ambition changed.

I didn't plan on being a comedian. I didn't plan on getting married and I didn't plan on having kids, but I did all those things.

I lost my passion for work. No, that's a negative statement. I just had a bigger passion for something else, for my son, and growing up with him.

The further I get away from coaching, the more I know I made the right decision. You almost forget how wonderful family life is.

Now that I have kids, I don't want to do so many daredevily things anymore.

We have decided that now is the time for me to focus intently on my top priority, my family, as Elizabeth and I raise our two young children. To that end, I will not seek reelection to a third term.

Before, I would spend all my hours at training, come home, sleep, eat, watch football, sleep, and go back to training the next day. Now I do the school run, train, pick up my daughter. I am living in the real world. I am a father now. That has given me more satisfaction than football.

It's very rare that stand-up comics have kids, because once they do, they stop doing stand-up.

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?

If you organize your family life to spend even ten or fifteen minutes a morning reading something that connects you with these timeless principles, its almost guaranteed that you will make better choices during the day--in the family, on the job, in every dimension of life. Your thoughts will be higher. Your interactions will be more satisfying. You will have a greater perspective. You will increase that space between what happens to you and your response to it. You will be more connected to what really matters most.

I always thought I'd write when I retired - when I turned 65. But by the time I was 33, to tell you the truth, I was a little bored with drugs and sex, and I thought I'd do the writing thing.

I grew up in a normal family. I have sweet parents, who are still married... But my life is so different from how I thought it would be.

Now that I'm experiencing motherhood, I'm ready to write the next chapter of my family story. Of course a few jaded folks in the press corps will claim I ran out of money or just want to kiss John Corbett again. One of these things is true.

There will never come a time when you don't have to practice

Earlier in life, I put family in front of faith. I've fixed that. But I always tried to keep work fourth on the list. I was proud when [my wife] Nellie told an interviewer, 'I never could tell whether John had a good practice or a bad practice, because he never brought it home'

My career was about to change radically, in turning 50 I had hit the age where my Dad made a big career and his life started to unravel.

Now I just feel like I'm more open to life. I have two children.

I'm in a different chapter of my life. As time goes by and I grow older, I find that I need to just be quiet and think. There have been periods when I've locked myself away for days, but now it's different - I'm married and we have a daughter who is in my office the whole time.

I was sowing wild oats and doing the kind of things that you should do when you don't have kids. Now, I'm just doing less of that, but I earned it, you know. I feel like just spending quiet evenings with my wife and son and sitting in bed in the morning and watching him marvel over the curtains opening or whatever little thing. That all feels really good. And so, I've changed because I'm impressed.

Having kids had a big effect on me, but nothing more than when they started to get older- that really made me realize how fleeting each moment is.

I left my apartment in London and I sold everything. I literally had $1000 and a suitcase when I got on the plane. The next day I enrolled in my first acting class. We had some great people, Jim Carrey, Ellen DeGeneres, Molly Ringwald. It was very inspirational.

I had prepared myself for the second half of my life [to be] filled with other passions that don't include being in front of the camera. And then all of a sudden I got more work and more work and more work. And I went, "Well maybe things have shifted." And I think they have.