My dad has done a bit of research on our family tree, and we can trace it quite far back. My dad believes he has traced us back to being a great-great-great-great-great-great cousin of Wellington.
As a child, I was fortunate enough to be close to family members who were - and still are - great storytellers. I was a gullible country boy from Rocky Mount, Virginia, and I believed every folktale they told me, no matter how fantastic.
My story as an artist has been about trial and error. It's been about artist development, character building, struggle, happiness and failure, family, and music.
If you go to most third world countries, the older woman dispenses advice to the arguing couple while other members of the family, or even the village, sit around and listen. It is no big deal.
I don't know that it exists, the perfect family. It's always complicated.
Imagine if you grew up in a place where your lineage was there for a hundred years, and part of the culture was to play music 50 percent of the time. You'd probably have a lot of musicians in your family too.
My family is Abenaki Indian on my mother's side. My father's side of the family is Slovak, and we also have some English ancestry.
My first three-sisters novel in a while, 'Sandcastles' tells the story of the Sullivan family - two passionate artists and their three wildly different daughters. There's also a renegade nun and a mystery man, but I don't want to give too much away!
I've always just talked to my family and my friends. I've never been a person that's gone through excessive therapy at all. Some people might say that I should.
Yes, it is long past time we get serious about tackling the nation's ever-growing deficits. But the average American family drawn into serious debt cannot just threaten to stiff its creditors. It must cut its spending in the future, but also take responsibility for the debt incurred in the past.
The family's first, and the career is second. I could get fired from a show. As long as everything's okay with my family, it really would not bother me.
The thing that's really cool for me about Miami Beach is you have this dichotomy between sunlight and family and happiness and innocence and then at night, darker, stranger mob conspiracy stuff sort of comes out. It seems like a storytelling engine. You can just keep writing about how those two worlds smash into each other.
I was 17 when I was forced into marriage. I had no hand in it, and I didn't even enjoy being with the man. Also, I wanted to study, but no one listened to me. I wanted to move forward in life, it wasn't a happy situation. Because of some family problems, I had to stick around.
Family time is really important to me.
My family made it through Hurricane Sandy. We have water, power, and a roof, but the survivor's guilt makes me want to hide. Sneak away from the brilliance of life. It shouts at me: 'Don't enjoy anything too much; people are suffering.' I feel childlike somehow.
When I was a kid, my mum had a lot of Dumas books in the house, and she's from France originally. My mother had one particular Dumas book that was a family heirloom - this old, beat-up 1938 edition of 'The Count of Monte Cristo' in French. She came to America after losing her parents in World War II as a little kid.
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 think that being Jewish has generated an extremely strong sense of the importance of family. If I look at my Scandinavian colleagues, they don't have that urgency about family. All my movies are about that.
I think, and I mean this sincerely, I was raised humbly. We were a lower middle income family and a household that was scrimping by at times. We were watching the dollar, stretching the dollar, and coupons. It was all those things.
Like millions of others, I have been plagued by the devastating effects of cancer hitting not one, but multiple members of my family.
Let's face it: grandparents are very important to family systems. You're babysitters, but you also instill values in children that sometimes skip a generation.
There are different groups of people in your life that you behave slightly differently with. You behave one way with your family. You behave in a different way with your work colleagues. You behave differently with your friends from the movie club, your fitness instructor - all subtly different personas.
I'd rather be the protector than the protected. I'm naturally the protector - being a mother and having a famous family. You have to navigate when it's right to protect.
My ultimate life dream project is my kids. My family.
I knew I wanted to be a singer from the age of five. I've been lucky to be so single-minded - some of my friends still don't know what they want to do, and they're finding it hard. There are home videos of me singing and taking centre stage at family parties when I'm about three.
I wanted to retire after I played for the Mets. My family said wait one year, that there was no need to rush it. I gave it a year and now it's time to say goodbye.
What I learned from architectural drafting is that everything has to have a plan to work. You just can't wing it. I can't get all the materials I need for a house and just start building. Whether it's a career, family, life - you have to plan it out.
It's really a great experience to be able to work on a large production, traveling around like a family, setting up for an amazing show, and all having the same purpose.
If you ask the government to solve all of your problems, it's a bit like asking your wife to cook and clean, to raise the children, to hold down a second job to help with the family finances, to keep her parents happy and well and keep your parents happy and well, and to also - to do the lawn and clean the gutters.
It's cool to have parents and family who will always tell me the truth no matter what. They'll tell me if I'm doing something stupid!
You can't help but have your children and your family be part of what you dream about when you dream up a song.
I did grow up in a military family but lacked the perspective to grasp the cognitive dissonance carried by most people who serve in the armed forces or the circumstances that push lots of folks into the military. I don't blame G.I. Joe or Rambo for that atmosphere, but they certainly reflected the final stage of a two generation cultural myth.
Our personalities are the not the same, Coach Saban and I. And I have the utmost respect for what he's done and what he's done for me and my family.
The financial costs of family breakdown are incredibly high.
When I was 13, my family moved from a suburb of New York City to Miami, Florida, and we moved there the Friday before Labor Day weekend.
I don't fight for my legacy or for the glory or anything like that. The feedback from the fans is nice, don't get me wrong; it's a good feeling having them - you on their side. But I'm motivated by making a good living for my family, and that's what made me get serious about this.
