Tuppence was what my grandmother nicknamed my mother, so she gave it to me. My sister is called Angel, and my brother was going to be called Bubba or Sonny, until they let me and my sister name him Josh.
My grandmother was this amazing woman in the Dominican Republic who used to read tea leaves and palms. She would cure people in her neighborhood by going into her garden, plucking a couple of leaves, and brewing teas.
My grandmother, who picked cotton, and my mom, who picked cotton as a child - my grandmother had a work ethic. She had 13 children that she had to raise and ended up for a time moving into the projects, but because my grandmother had a work ethic, she didn't stay in the projects... that's not how she wanted to raise her children.
My grandmother raised five children during the Depression by herself. At 50, she threw her sewing machine into the back of a pickup truck and drove from North Dakota to California. She was a real survivor, so that's my stock. That's how I want my kids to be too.
I had a grandmother who would always encourage me to learn about theater and film.
When you a ghetto star, when you a hood star, you gonna take care of your grandmother, your mother. When you on that next level, you gotta take care of the city, the streets.
My grandmother took me to church on Sunday all day long, every Sunday into the night. Then Monday evening was the missionary meeting. Tuesday evening was usher board meeting. Wednesday evening was prayer meeting. Thursday evening was visit the sick. Friday evening was choir practice. I mean, and at all those gatherings, we sang.
Yes, I can speak a bit and I can read and write in Russian. I learned it from my grandmother who raised me with all the Russian fairytales.
I was named after my Jewish grandfather who left Poland early in the 20th century. What I knew from an early age was that he had lived most of his life in England, his Jewish wife had died, and he married a non-Jewish woman who was my grandmother.
As a little girl, I remember always wanting my grandmother to make blackberry cobbler for me. I'm obsessed with it.
My grandmother on my father's side, a nightclub singer, was a Jewish refugee from Prussia who ended up in Jerusalem, where she met my grandfather - a British army officer. I remember as a child having bowls of chicken soup made by her. There were lots of interesting components, like feet and necks.
For me, true beauty has nothing to do with wrinkles and everything to do with the fact that my maternal grandmother raised five children just after the war and remained a fighter throughout her life. True beauty is the slick of red lipstick my paternal grandmother would put on before going to church on Sunday.
People love talking about writers as storytellers, but I hate being called that: it suggests I got it from my grandmother or something, when my writing really comes out of silence. If a storyteller came up to me, I'd run away.
My grandmother spent her whole life working as a maid, a cook and a babysitter, barely scraping by, but still working hard to give my mother, her only child, a chance in life, so that my mother could give my brother and me an even better one.
I have always admired stylishly confident women who dress with great authority. This lifelong love of elegance began with the humble wardrobe of my late grandmother Mrs. Bennie Frances Davis.
I come from a long line of strong and confident women out of New Orleans. My grandmother and great-grandmother were women who ran their homes and were leaders in their communities. I was never taught that there was anything that I couldn't do, and I believed that.
I think I must be the only grandmother in the world who was given an iPod by her grandsons. It has changed my life - I'd be lost without it.
In almost the same way you know what your grandmother looks and sounds like, you know what Bruce Willis looks and sounds like.
My grandmother, who taught me how to cook, didn't know how to read.
I was named for my grandmother. It's an evil-eye name, to protect you from bad things.
I was told bedtime stories by my father or my grandmother. Books, I mostly read on my own in bed.
There's nothing wrong with taking yourself out of the dating pool. You don't need to be in a relationship because that's what society expects of you or because your grandmother thinks you need to be married by a certain date. Those days are over. Instead, take a step back and say, 'I'm OK alone.'
You tell me you want to race down the street, I'm going to try to beat you. My grandmother asks me to race down the street, I'm going to try to beat her. And I'll probably enjoy it. Competitive to a fault, sometimes.
I remember a specific moment, watching my grandmother hang the clothes on the line, and her saying to me, 'you are going to have to learn to do this,' and me being in that space of awareness and knowing that my life would not be the same as my grandmother's life.
