I enjoy just showing people other sides of me, especially everyone always sees me in my helmet and ski suit. It's nice to just show everyone me, just me in my everyday clothes or just me in high heels or just me not in my ski gear, basically.
I wear my Viking helmet because the horns define how sharp my brains are. If you try to rub me the wrong way, I will stick you with both of my horns.
I lead by example. My kids know what sweat is. They've seen me come home from so many runs and asked, 'What's on your skin? How did you get it?' And I tell them, 'It's from exercise!' So now my son will come home from a bike ride, take off his helmet and say, 'Look, Mom. I'm sweating! I just worked out!'
I write because writing is the gift God has given me to help people in the world.
Some people are embarrassed to say they came from East St. Louis, Ill., but now more people want to claim it. I grew up in a community center and I knew what it gave me. I always knew I wanted to give back and help people because people helped me.
I went to work in a woman's home in Los Angeles as a mother's helper. I worked there about two years. Went to school with all rich kids. I was the only poor kid in the school, and I was already insecure. But my voice saved me because I sang in school, and I was real popular because of my voice.
Lennon was very helpful. What he taught me seems completely obvious: he expected people to treat each other well.
When I first met my husband, I needed that helping hand to take the reins and look after me.
I've been very lucky to work on a wide variety of projects, including two long-run and top-10 dramatic television shows. That is why it is so important to offer a helping hand to the next generation of young Latinos coming up behind me.
I definitely got my philanthropic genes from my mom and dad. They taught me from a very early age to always lend a helping hand to anyone in need, and I hope to raise my daughter to be a very kind and charitable person.
People ask me, 'What do you do?' And I tell them I'm a writer, but always with the silent reservation, 'I am, of course, not really a writer. Hemingway was a writer.'
My sweetheart is to me more than a coined hemisphere.
That's one thing people don't know about me - I eat in my sleep. I can't keep things in the house; I literally have in my refrigerator water, coconut water, orange juice, hemp milk and like, tea bags. And that's really it. Because I eat in my sleep.
A pen is to me as a beak is to a hen.
I do look after everyone around me; that's just who I am. I am a real mother hen.
The gentleman puts me in mind of an old hen which persists in setting after her eggs are taken away.
You're never going to see the fat Elvis in me. People I admired like Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix and John Belushi all died at 27. I've got jeans older than that.
Henry James and Edith Wharton are huge for me because they gave me a way to understand America while still respecting the European backgrounds of my relatives.
And it's impossible for me to read Henry James.
With my wife I don't get no respect. I made a toast on her birthday to 'the best woman a man ever had.' The waiter joined me.
