I always feel like I want to write a song when I'm really upset. And when I'm in an argument with my family, I go straight to the piano and just kind of take it out on the piano and get all emotional.
Looking back, I see that I write books about brothers and sisters, about what makes up a family, what works and what is nurturing.
Luckily because I had a family and children, my priorities changed. I mean, I'm very passionate about my work but I have other interests and other things that balance my life.
I talk to Simon, I write to him. I never used to write a diary. But now I'm writing a diary to him. I think it's not just me, but lots of others, family and friends, can still feel him around.
If we were to inspect ourselves or members of our family and our friends, we would see that we don't really have to go all the way overseas to be mystified - we can be mystified right at home.
I'm a professional cook. I've worked with other cooks from all over the world, but my family is not that way - they're always lived within 25 miles of my hometown!
I have really fond memories of Texas. By the time I was eight, we started to go back to Chile very regularly, and many family members came to visit us because we couldn't go visit them.
The truth is, I've been going pretty much nuts all year. I constantly have to fight being scattered. I feel like I'm on automatic pilot from fatigue. The hardest thing is trying to be present, living for the moment, for everybody in the family.
But then my mother, who's a very selfless, stoic person from a family of Marines, would tell us that what was good for our father was good for us - he would make more money; therefore, we'd be able to get better educations.
But I'll tell you something: We had a big family discussion about it recently, my two sisters and I, and I pointed out that we all have the same genes as our mother and we're all susceptible to becoming alcoholics.
My mom always talks about how hard it was to grow up in a political family. It's always split up, and just - I want to have fun in life. No, politics isn't on the list.
My father had played the guitar when he was young, and my uncle Jack had worked for Kalamazoo, before the war, developing guitar pickups. So there was a kind of family thing about the guitar, although it was considered something of an anomaly then.
When I first found out that I was an Idol finalist, I cried tears of happiness. I was just so happy, and my family was there and the fact that got to see that moment and share that moment with me was just everything to me.
I have heard nothing from my friends at The Family Guy. Yeah, I heard that they got picked up again and all that good stuff, but I haven't heard anything yet. But, you know, I'm very elusive and hard to contact.
I don't remember my parents together, ever: my father was much older, and really only interested in collecting magazines and bathroom suites; we were the only family in the area to have a bathroom suite on the lawn.
I declare before you all that my whole life, whether it be long or short, shall be devoted to your service and the service of our great imperial family to which we all belong.
I came from a family who believed in, in quotes, the Rights of Man, who believed that in order to justify the sort of luxurious life that the majority of us have, related to the whole world, that you had to do something.
I grew up in Tuscany in a very poor family. My father was a farmer and my mother was a farmer, but, my childhood was very good. I am very grateful for my childhood, because it was full of gladness and good humanity.
Theodore Roosevelt had drawn public attention to his attractive family in order to create a bond with ordinary Americans. Eleanor Roosevelt had successfully broached the idea that a First Lady could be nearly as much a public figure as her husband.
Family matters, friends matter, love matters. Those you love and who love you matter. That's what writing does - it allows you to say all those things.
Not only did God deliver me from the bondage of alcoholism, he also blessed my family financially because of my commitment to honor what he had done for me and for not doing what I believed could possibly be destructive to others.
