My father never wanted me to be a writer. He didn't - he came to terms with it maybe two years before he died. He wanted me to be a weather girl because when I was growing up, there were very few Latinas on television, and in the early '70s when you first started seeing Latinas on TV, they would be the weather girls.

I've always read broadly: literary fiction, sci-fi, fantasy, chick lit, historical, dystopian, nonfiction, memoir. I've even read Westerns. I prefer female protagonists.

My father always defined my gender to my brothers. He'd say, 'This is your sister; you must take care of her.'

But I deal with this meditating and by understanding I've been put on the planet to serve humanity. I have to remind myself to live simply and not to overindulge, which is a constant battle in a material world.

Disney had made such a great deal of money on Snow White that the banks gave him the go-ahead on the next three films. But he was heavily dependent on the foreign market.

I taped my first series for PBS in 1982 at WJCT-TV in Jacksonville, Florida. The show, called 'Everyday Cooking with Jacques Pepin,' was about saving time and money in the kitchen - and it was a celebration of simple and unpretentious food.

But you've got to have money for comfort, which obviously doesn't matter as much when you're young, but even so. I always like to bloody eat well and be warm. Have a drink when I want it.

What is the price of justice? What is the price of justice? When bail is set unreasonably high, people are behind bars only because they are poor. Not because they're a danger or a flight risk - only because they are poor. They don't have money to get out of jail and they certainly don't have money to flee anywhere.