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My grandparents, they came through Ellis Island in 1923, and you know, I'd heard all the stories.

My grandparents used to tell me stories about their trip to Ellis Island from Russia and life on the Lower East Side of New York.

I was very poor and I was a waitress, and it's hard to be a poor waitress in New York.

I always heard that immigrants had a really hard life when they came to America.

It's really hard to be poor in New York - I was really poor when I lived in New York.

It wasn't until sixth grade, at P.S. 168, when my teacher took us on a field trip to her house that I realized we were poor. I have no idea what my teacher's intentions were - whether she was trying to inspire us or if she actually thought visiting her Manhattan brownstone with her view of Central Park qualified as a school trip.

I've been to those places where it's 'poor, pitiful me.'

Beginning with a trip out to Ellis Island, I saw for myself where thousands of European immigrants took their first steps onto American soil, bringing with them nothing but their ambition: people such as Erich von Stroheim and Adolph Zukor.

I went to Queen's - a fine university with the proudly stupidest frosh week in the country. This was, when I was there, supposed to be somehow evidence of a higher social class.

We weren't poor growing up on Long Island, but it wasn't lavish - just a regular middle-class house.