A Quote by Mahershala Ali

Having a child is the polar opposite experience of the awards season experience. The awards-season experience requires you to be out in the community, in the heart of the community, at the nucleus of the film community in a really committed way for about a six-month period of time. Having a child requires you to nest, to be in your home, and to create and make your home and environment that is one that is potentially very welcoming and nurturing for a child.
That's very indicative to me of one of the things that really creates an aversion for me about having a child - this idea that every decision you make in your life has to be dictated by the child. And yet, I believe that if you choose to have a child you have an absolute primary responsibility to create a safe, loving environment.
For many observers, a child who has known nothing but war, a child for whom the Kalashnikov is the only way to make a living and for whom the bush is the most welcoming community, is a child lost forever for peace and development. I contest this view. For the sake of these children, it is essential to prove that another life is possible.
As a parent with a child with autism, its been really tough to experience your child having autism.
There is no way out of the experience except through it, because it is not really your experience at all but the baby's. Your body is the child's instrument of birth.
For me to sit here and give all kinds of excuses to make it right, I can't do. But what I want to ask everyone out there, everyone that has a child, everyone that has a brother, a sister: if your child or family member was abducted today, if a mad man came in, a terrorist came in, abducted your family member or your child and if I said to you I can bring your child home...does it matter how I bring them home?
Saving the world requires saving democracy. That requires well-informed citizens. Conservation, environment, poverty, community, education, family, health, economy- these combine to make one quest: liberty and justice for all. Whether one's special emphasis is global warming or child welfare, the cause is the same cause. And justice comes from the same place being human comes from: compassion.
It is easy to say that you can adopt the whole human race as your children, but it is not the same as living in a home with a child and shaping all you do to help him learn to be happy and whole and good. Don't live your life without ever holding a child in your arms, on your lap, in your home, and feeling a child's arms around you and hearing his voice in your ear and seeing his smile, given to you because you put it into your heart.
The child in each of us Knows paradise. Paradise is home. Home as it was Or home as it should have been. Paradise is one's own place, One's own people, One's own world, Knowing and known, Perhaps even Loving and loved. Yet every child Is cast from paradise- Into growth and new community, Into vast, ongoing Change.
The experience of having a child does crack you wide open. I felt like I suddenly had to rebuild the skin that I'd grown over the years before having a child. Perhaps that might be quite interesting in terms of acting.
My childhood proved to me that there could be no enjoyment of football without community. But it becomes difficult when this community is having problems with its identity. That's when we experience all possible forms of nationalist exaggeration.
There's something peculiar about writing fiction. It requires an interesting balance between seeing the world as a child and having the wisdom of a middle-aged person. The further you get from childhood and the experience of the teenage years, the greater the danger of losing that wellspring.
When I approach a more mature age, I am not going to live in America. Visiting my grandmother, when she was 94, which is a very long life in Cambodia, I saw how important it was that she was in a community with my sisters, brothers and all grandchildren were so involved in her life. I liked that experience so much more than visiting my sister-in-law's grandparents in a nursing home. It's about looking at a community through your window versus being part of a community that's alive, that is youthful and old and hungry and smelly and loud, where everything is vibrant and colorful.
When we believe in our child fully, we trust that they are doing the very best they can at every moment, given their age, past experience and present circumstances. It is this kind of trust that I mean when I talk about parenting being on their child's side. Having someone dependably 'on their side' is absolutely critical if a child is to grow into adulthood with a generous capacity for love and trust. If we aren't on their side, who will be?
It was fantastic playing Conan; it was such an experience to go out of the country and be this barbaric human savage child for a month or so. It was a blast and definitely a great experience.
In community, where you have all the affection you could ever dream of, you feel that there is a place where even community cannot reach. That's a very important experience. In that loneliness, which is like a dark night of the soul, you learn that God is greater than community.
If you are having the experience of anxiety, your body is making adrenaline and cortisone, if you are having the experience of tranquility, your body starts making valium, if you are having the experience of exhilaration and joy, your body makes interleukins and interferons which are powerful anti-cancer drugs. So, your body is constantly converting your experiences into molecules.
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