New Year's Eve was always a big occasion at home with the family. Every year we would get the karaoke machine out and I'd entertain everyone, even as a young kid.
You've got to enjoy time with your family and friends, and if you're involved in sports franchises, those peak moments in playoff games. You have to enjoy life.
If you think about making a difference in the community, my family has always had a strong interest in the arts. I'm always interested in finding ways to innovate... It's a blend; it's not a point focus.
Growing up in a multicultural family, I never really felt that I was different - even though I was from most of the kids in my school. Especially with music, I try to just approach it as an equal.
If our society continues to support basic research on how living organisms function, it is likely that my great grandchildren will be spared the agony of losing family members to most types of cancer.
I had 13 weeks off and I would pack up the family and drive to some mountain retreat where we could be together and fish all day. I loved it. I needed it.
The most ethical way to deal with an unethical situation would be to simply say: 'We did something wrong.' But nobody in a family like mine would ever respond like this.
Of course, I will continue to share my favorite Southern recipes, just like my mama, grandmother and family shared with me over the years. And now, I'll be adding a little bit of a lighter touch to some of these wonderful dishes.
It would be ridiculous for me to say I am unlucky, but, like any other family and any other girl, I've had my ups and downs.
All of my books are based in some way on my personal experiences, or the experiences of members of my family, or the stories kids would tell me in school.
I loved teaching. It was my world. I only left because I was overwhelmed with three careers - teaching, writing, and my family.
It's hard enough to work and raise a family when your kids are all healthy and relatively normal, but when you add on some kind of disability or disease, it can just be such a burden.
I have now disposed of all my property to my family. There is one thing more I wish I could give them, and that is the Christian religion.
My kids paid the price for my career. We can say it's for our family, but it almost never is. It's about us. It's just some of us can pretend better than others.
The great danger for family life, in the midst of any society whose idols are pleasure, comfort and independence, lies in the fact that people close their hearts and become selfish.
When I was younger I was really shy, but I'd always be singing, driving my family crazy. Apparently I was even singing when I was in the cot. That probably didn't sound too good!
Each time a high-wage job is lost, a family is turned upside down. And that affects the communities where they live.
People just don't laugh when their family is violated, and you don't shrug it off. You band together and you defend together. It's a funny, primitive instinct.
I was the youngest in my family. When the other kids went to school, my mother would make them breakfast and then she would go back to bed for an hour, so I was sort of babysat by television.
It's the sense of what family is at the dinner table. It was the joy of knowing mother was in the kitchen making our favorite dish. I wish more people would do this and recall the joy of life.
What little family I got is in Mississippi. A whole lot of them died before I left, and my sister died a long time ago, before my mama did.
