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My dad would always tell me, 'When you meet a man, look him in his eye and shake his hand,' and that's just something I've been doing for a long time.

I told my parents, 'You've taken care of me all my life, helped me through college. You've been awesome, but now it's my turn to be my own man.'

When my father spoke, it was to say something meaningful.

I had a 2-week courtship with a fellow student in the fiction workshop in Iowa and a 5-minute wedding in a lawyer's office above the coffee shop where we'd been having lunch that day. And so I sent a cable to my father saying, 'By the time you get this, Daddy, I'll already be Mrs. Blaise!'

Every morning, my dad would have me looking in the mirror and repeat, 'Today is going to be a great day; I can, and I will.'

When I grew up, people said, 'You'll never be the man your dad was.' And I said, 'Gee, I hope not.'

My dad just imprinted in my mind from a very young age that you always do what you say you're gonna do when you say you're gonna do it.

One day I was talking about what I was going to do next, and just found myself announcing it: 'I'm going to write a book about my father.'

I recall my dad saying about me once that the only time he'd ever heard me say 'never' was when I was asked if I'd had enough.

My mother, Yolanda, was a little girl who never grew up, and sometimes we would laugh, and I would say things like, 'Okay, so now it looks like I am your mother and you are my daughter,' to which she would reply, 'Well, yes. Handle it and pamper me.'