There are Katy-Perry-in-concert-type pieces that I look at and am like, 'This dress has a hundred cupcakes on it - I want it!' My mom will always talk me down.
My mom has always been very open, very liberal. So I grew up with that, and I can appreciate everything that she did and went through and was exposed to.
My grandfather was an illegal immigrant for the 60 or so years he was in the United States. I had another great-great-grandmother on my mom's side who snuck in in a suitcase.
I wasn't always a writer. When I went to college and majored in fine arts, I was a painter. Then I was a stay-at-home mom.
My mom allowed me to take an old burlap bag and fill it with moss, corn stalks and rocks, then hang it from a tree and spend an hour a day punching my heavy bag.
When I was little, I asked my mom to move us to Los Angeles and get me an agent. She would say, 'Stop it. Go play in the dirt.'
Many of my books come from what if questions that I can't answer, things that I'm worried about as either a woman, a wife, a mom, an American.
I do work too hard sometimes, but my mom is such an inspiration. She tells me to 'chill out' and not take things so seriously. She will say: 'Go and have a massage.'
In fact, my mom always told me because I was the daughter of an Army officer born overseas in Paris, France, that under the Constitution she believed that I could never run for president.
In Australia, I can just say to my mom, 'I'm going down the street.' And I can walk around pretty much all the places I know.
My mom started smoking when she was 11. She went to the hill next door to try her first cigarette. She set the entire hill on fire, but it didn't deter her.
First, I started taking dance classes, and then I started taking singing lessons. Then my mom put me into a year-round theatre program where I did seven shows.
Nobody sang better than my mom. That's why I've never even thought of singing for singing sake. I've always thought of a song as an acting piece, as a way to say something.
But the fact is, I'm not work-identified. I'm not a lawyer or a writer. I'm a mom, and I'm a woman, and that's the kind of people I want to see in books in the starring role.
My mom doesn't post on Facebook, but she'll tell anyone within about the first five minutes of meeting them about my sister and I, in whatever way she can.
Even when I was modelling, I never had a mom sitting on my head and a bunch of people waiting on me. I've always been independent. I'll do my thing and go.
I was raising a child full time, sharing the responsibility with his mom. He lived with me half the time, so I chose not to go away and make certain movies.
My mom has always been my support system. She taught me to never give up and to keep pursuing my passions no matter what.
I want to go to college to study journalism. I want to speak French fluently, to travel. My mom was a journalist and it's in my blood.
She had a hit for every syllable: 'Don't. You. Ever. Talk. To. Me. Like. That. Ever. Again.' That was the last time I ever talked back to Mom.
I was born in Texas and I lived there 'till I was 8. Then I moved to the Dominican Republic with my mom, lived there for two years and forgot every word of English I knew.
