My grandmother was a kind of Scarsdale New York society woman best known in her day as the author of the 1959 book 'Growing Your Own Way: An Informal Guide for Teen-Agers' - this despite being a person whose parenting style made Joan Crawford's wire hangers look like pool noodles.

My grandmother and I saw an average of eight movies a week double features second run.

My mother and my grandmother are pioneers of Mexican cuisine in this country so I grew up in the kitchen. My mom Zarela Martinez was by far my biggest influence and inspiration - and toughest critic.

Miami Beach - that's where I grew up in a middle-class Jewish family led by my maternal grandfather. Me my great-grandmother - a Holocaust survivor who was my roommate - my grandparents my mom and her brother all shared a four-bedroom house.

One of my most sentimental items is my grandmother's engagement ring that my mom gave me a few years ago. It's a Victorian-style setting that's closed in the back so it doesn't sparkle the way diamonds do now. I wear it as a pendant.

My mom Irmelin taught me the value of life. Her own life was saved by my grandmother during World War II.

I wish my mother had left me something about how she felt growing up. I wish my grandmother had done the same. I wanted my girls to know me.

It's the moms of this nation - single married widowed - who really hold this country together. We're the mothers we're the wives we're the grandmothers we're the big sisters we're the little sisters we're the daughters. You know it's true don't you? You're the ones who always have to do a little more.

I was a bartender for a long time so I know how to make drinks but I'm more likely to offer them than to have them. I think this is one of the reasons why I get to live longer than my great-grandmother did and why I get to produce more writing than she did and why my marriage isn't in dire straits.

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.