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.

Mom was a smoker. My grandfather was a smoker. My aunts were smokers. My uncles were smokers. I don't know any smokers now not even my mom.

Three of my children are medical doctors they know at least a hundred times as much about your body as my grandfather knew but they don't know much more about soul than he did.

There are fathers who do not love their children there is no grandfather who does not adore his grandson.

Part of what I loved - and love - about being around older people is the tangible sense of history they embody. I'm interested in military history for instance because both my grandfathers fought in World War II. I'm interested in writing because one of those grandfathers wrote books.

It's in the history books the Holocaust. It's just a phrase. And the truth is it happened yesterday. It happened to my mother. I never met my grandmothers or my grandfathers. They were all wiped up in the gas chambers of Nazi Germany.

I think there is a heritage which I'm proud of which is a fight for democracy a fight for social justice a fight for freedom. My grandfather went to jail or exile six times in his life fighting for his principles for democracy or for his country. And my father twice.

My grandfather gave me inspiration to cook and love food and flavors. My Aunt Raffie gave me creativity and the inspiration to create new things. My mother inspires me to find simplicity in food.

Food was always a big part of my life. My grandfather was one of 14 kids and his parents had a pasta factory so as a kid he and his siblings would sell pasta door to door. After he became a movie producer he opened up De Laurentiis Food Stores - one in Los Angeles and one in New York.

I felt no pressure that my grandfather was famous and my uncle was famous.

My grandfather's family used to own a pasta factory in Naples and they would go door-to-door selling their pasta. So his love of food came from his parents which was then passed down to my mother and then again to me.

But whatever my failure I have this thing to remember - that I was a pioneer in my profession just as my grandfathers were in theirs in that I was the first man in this section to earn his living as a writer.

I want to be able to experience everything. I want to experience being a husband experience being a father experience maybe hopefully someday being a grandfather and all those things. I want that experience. When I die I want to be exhausted.

My grandfather could barely read. My grandmother had a sixth-grade education. They were people who were industrious. They were frugal.

I part of this great nation because my grandfather was born here in Cincinnati Ohio. He took a horse back in 1895 and ride it all the way down to Guanajuato looking for his American dream. No penny in his pocket only dreams in his head. And he was an immigrant coming from the States into Mexico. And he found his American dream in Mexico.

My dad recently reminded me that my grandfather's cousin was Lefty Frizzell.

My family was very supportive of whatever I wanted because my grandfather was an opera singer. My dad's dad. So my dad has an appreciation for the arts and he let me choose my own path.