Madonna did amazing songs. She had an amazing sense of style, without a stylist. And she was flawed, and sometimes she admitted it. I'll fight the fight for Madonna. I think she should send me some chocolates or something to thank me.
I don't go up to guys. I'm all about a guy sending me flowers, getting me chocolates and surprising me.
I inherited my weight problem from my mum. She was always on diets. If there was a box of chocolates in the house, she'd eat half a chocolate, then put the other half back. She loved me, but she did encourage me to diet in my teens.
In 2004, we opened our first store in Manhattan. I installed a big window so people could see me making the chocolates. That store cost $1.8 million. It has a 45-foot-long chocolate counter and a hot chocolate bar made in Louis XVI style because that's when chocolate arrived in Europe.
At fifteen life had taught me undeniably that surrender, in its place, was as honorable as resistance, especially if one had no choice.
My mother raised me in the church. I was not allowed to stay home on Sunday; there was no option. I sang in the choir all the way up until I went to college.
I never made it to the school choir because the music teacher didn't like my voice. I was pretty sad. But he was probably right; I did have a voice a bit like a goat, but my dad told me to never give up and to keep going, and it's paid off.
I think, initially, my rebellion, my rebellion of going to college when my dad would have liked me to stay home and work in the herbs, I think that it was a pretty mild rebellion in the sense that I thought, 'Well, I'm going to go learn how to be a music teacher so that I can come home and do choir.'
My mother was truly my saving grace, because she would take me to church with her. I would see my mother smiling in the choir, and I wanted to know this God that made her so happy. If I had not had that faith in my life, I don't know where I would be right now.
The first one I remember singing on stage was 'Somewhere Out There' from 'An American Tail.' I was around 7, and my choir teacher at school asked me if I would sing it. My parents told me that I needed to move around the stage, so for the entire time I just walked back and forth from side to side while I was singing - there's videotape of it.
The Pentecostals had horns, drums, guitars, huge choirs, and screaming and dancing and all kinds of stuff. That was for me.
I have a great T-shirt that I received at the New Jersey Hall of Fame when I was inducted. It says - it makes me choke up - it says, 'I'm a Jersey tomato'... I am. I am a Jersey girl and proud of it.
There are people who would rather choke than go see my movies. They write me letters all the time.
I'm a big crier in general. The right life insurance commercial will take me out for a couple of days. I watched Hillary Clinton on the news the other day, and I got choked up by Hillary Clinton.
I love 'Love Actually.' 'Love Actually,' there's, like, nine stories in that movie. Three of them are good. But watching that movie, I get emotional, I get choked up, my wife makes fun of me. I don't know if as you get older you get sappier and sentimental.
For me, 'choking' is just another term in golf.
People spend a lifetime thinking about how they would really like to live. I asked my friends and no one seems to know very clearly. To me it's very clear now. I wish my life could have been like the years when I was writing 'Love in the Time of Cholera.'
The things I keep going back to, rereading, maybe they say more about me as a reader than about the books. Love in the Time of Cholera, Pale Fire.
May God be with me! May Heaven bless this New Year. May it be a year of fruitfulness, of peace and prosperity; may it be a year of peace and unity for all mankind; may the world be freed of cholera.
I wasn't able to lower my cholesterol so they put me on a statin drug. It is called lipitor. I was able to lower my level in about 30 days from above 300 to below 200.
