Bill Cosby
American actor, comedian, television producer and activist.
My wife and I have five children. And the reason why we have five children is because we do not...want...six.
We see a successful, elegant man now, but as a child, an adolescent, his life was not a done deal. Sidney respected his mistakes. When failure came, he never said, "This is too difficult, too hard," he had the resiliency to try again. His life is somewhere between astounding and unbelievable.
I am not interested in statistics that tell me things are not as bad as they seem. Things are horrible. I have met people crying about what is happening, but there is no solution yet. Our children are trying to tell us something, and we are not listening. I don't care what the statistics say.
My parents never smiled... because I had brain damage. My wife and I don't smile because our children are LOADED with it!! Oh, my parents smile now, whenever they come over to the house and see how much trouble I'm having. Oh, they have a ball! "Havin' a li'l trouble, huh, son?!"
A person with no children says, "Well I just love children," and you say "Why?" and they say, "Because a child is so truthful, that's what I love about 'em — they tell the truth." That's a lie, I've got five of 'em. The only time they tell the truth is if they're having pain.
[About his first-born child] My mother looked at it and said, "Oh, how precious!" I don't know why she said it. Well, I didn't know then. I know now, because my mother put a curse on me. A long time ago, I remember when I was a child what she said, and I later found out that mothers, all mothers, put a curse on their children. They say, "I hope, when you get married, you have some children who act exactly the same way that you act." And this curse WORKS! I mean, it started with that child! My wife and I have not been intellectuals since. Oh, my wife was pretty good for a while, but it didn't last that long. It didn't last two years.
[after his wife had beaten the children for disobedience] Now here's the funny part: she comes downstairs with a broken stick. She throws it on the table and begins to talk out loud... to... NOBODY! "Tell me you're not gonna do something when I tell you to do something? I mean, you MOVE when I say move! Think I carried you in my body for nine months so you can roll your eyes at me?! I roll that little head of yours down on the floor! You don't know who you're fooling with! I'll beat you until you can't grow anymore!"
Parents are not interested in justice — they want QUIET!
Now this...is the greatest...moment...in our lives. This is what we asked God for. This is what we wanted to see...if we could make! And I looked at it...and they started to clean it off...and it wasn't getting any better. I turned to my wife, I kissed her ever so gently on the lips and said, "Honey, I love you...very much. You just had...a lizard." Because the thing changed colors three times! And the neck and head didn't work it just [imitates a bobbing head]. And I said to the doctor, "Can you put this back? It needs to cook a little longer. Another three months maybe?" The hospital made us take it home.
My father walked to school 4 o'clock every morning with no shoes on, uphill, both ways, in 5 feet of snow and he was thankful.
My mother said to me: "When your father gets home, he's going to shoot you in the face with a bazooka! And I'm not going to stop him this time, either! You know, he's always wanted to kill you! The day you were born, he said, 'Kill it!' I stopped him from killing you for eleven years... [starts sobbing] ...and this is the thanks I get for saving your life!"
I love it when mothers get so mad they can't remember your name. "Come here, Roy, er, Rupert, er, Rutabaga... what is your name, boy? And don't lie to me, because you live here, and I'll find out who you are."
You know what my father's favorite game is? "Come here and pull my finger."
It's always strange. I've had a lot of people work for me, and I've found out it's a funny thing that you give them Saturday and Sunday off, and they work so hard to get to those two days and those are the two days that they totally destroy themselves. I mean, you know you think to yourself, you say, "My goodness, I've really pounded these people and worked to them to death." And Friday comes and they say, "Yeah!" And then they come in Monday... [he makes an expression that looks like he's exhausted and upset] and say, "Boy, am I glad to be back here. I'm no good on my own. I was given two whole days and I just went crazy."