Everything I did with my life I did so that I could give my parents everything they didn't have because of me.

I never sold any of those "lose 10 pounds every week" scams. I've not changed my tune in all these years. I've seen everything pass by me, and I've been offered millions of dollars to put my name on products that were just lies. And I never did it.

I took desperate measures to lose weight and did terrible things to myself. I went from diet pills to thirty laxatives a day to throwing up.

All of a sudden, I'm thinking that if I keep eating the way I'm eating, I'm not going to live long and I'm going to die. Having those thoughts as a young person can be very haunting.

When I was younger, I ate nothing but fried food. Everything was fried, from oysters to chicken to potatoes to vegetables. When you die in New Orleans, they deep fry you before they put you in the coffin. When we baptize children in New Orleans, we baptize them with a bordelaise sauce; we don't use water.

People treat me like family, 'cause I've always treated them like family.

I think at the age of 50, everyone should write their own autobiography.