One my favorite things is to go to the provinces of Russia and see the 18th century wood churches with the onion dome architecture. These humble wonders of incredible imagination of architects that were obviously not living in places like Paris or London, but they've created these amazing churches.
I can't go too much into my domestic life because there are ex-wives ready to do me in.
I have a fascination with the nasty things people do to each other and the way relationships go wrong, and how there can be this very dark underbelly to seemingly normal, mundane domestic life. They're the stories in the newspapers I always find interesting. That's not a very nice thing to admit to, is it?
It's Nixon who created the Environmental Protection Agency. Clean Air and Water Acts. Endangered Species Act. Promoted affirmative action. One could go on and on with Nixon as a New Deal liberal on domestic policy and a hawk, but one with great geo-political skills.
My husband is not in the slightest bit domesticated, but as the years go, by he's getting better. He can make an excellent omelette.
A designated patient 'carries' the group's dysfunction. A designated issue performs the same service for an individual, dominating our psyches so that other troubles can go unnoticed.
I have a very powerful sense of place, but I have a very powerful sense of being a migrant, so it's both. It seems like I'm always leaving my home. That's part of the formula. I love the Dominican Republic. I go back all the time. I love New Jersey. Go back all the time.
My parents are Dominican. I would always go to the Dominican Republic, and I fell in love with Bachata, which comes from the Dominican Republic.
If I went to somewhere busy, I wouldn't last very long. I can't go to a museum - I'll last 10 or 15 minutes in a museum. The problem is that when one person asks for a photograph, then someone sees a flash goes off, then everyone else sort of... it's sort of like a domino effect.
I'm hoping there'll be, if not a boom, then a big pick-up in housing because if that happens, then it will employ a lot of people, and the domino effect will go through the community, and it will help everyone.
If you read novels of the 19th century, they're pretty experimental. They take lots of chances; they seem to break a lot of rules. You've got omniscient narrators lecturing at times to the reader in first person. If you go back to the earliest novels, this is happening to a wild extent, like 'Tristram Shandy' or 'Don Quixote'.
Throughout my teens, I just wanted to go somewhere I could wear a Donald Duck pin and no one would care.
We're raising our girls to understand the real meaning of Christmas, and to know that it's most important to have Christmas in your heart. We go to our local mall and donate toys, and we say prayers for all the people in the world who might not be as lucky as we are.
Vehicle donation programs have existed forever, but the typical model loses a lot. There had to be a place to store them, people who could only go out so far regionally to pick them up.
I was once that kid that needed a donation - that needed help to go to camp because my mom wasn't able to pay for it.
My charitable donations go to educational efforts, such as Teach for America, Vanderbilt University, Berkshire School.
As soon as we find a cure, we will utilize any of the donations to go toward providing medication to those who can't afford it. That is my goal.
If we get the donations, I think we're going to raise a significant amount of money; some will be used for some administered costs, but the public portion of that will go directly into grants.
We created a line of pet food called Nutrish that's made to human standards, and 100 percent of the proceeds go to animal rescue. One of our top-tier donors is the ASPCA, and they help us challenge animal shelters all across the country to get more animals placed in homes.
I eat like no other; it drives everyone crazy. I eat donuts three times a day, and I probably go through four Mountain Dews a day. I'm on, like, a sugar high at all times, pretty much.
