Home is where your family is. Wherever you are, it's about the people you're surrounded by, not necessarily where you lay your head.

Sick people, particularly those with serious conditions, greatly prefer the company of their friends and family to residence in a hospital or nursing home.

The Jersey Shore is the kind of place where the policeman has a little cottage that might have been in the family for years and many other people call home.

My first serious girlfriend, when I was 16, was Mormon. I went to her house for 'family home evening,' and I was like, 'Why aren't you people ignoring each other and watching television?'

Many of the scrappy young people I meet who are the first in their family to go to college feel that they have to bring home a steady paycheck to make their family's sacrifices worthwhile.

Many people keep photos in their homes, in their office, or in their wallet, and happy families tend to display large numbers of photos at home. In 'Happier at Home,' I write about my 'shrine to my family' made of photographs.

Things down here in Hawaii are similar to Alabama. We go to church every Sunday. People are treated like family there just like here. There are many similarities there, and you want to be somewhere that feels like home, and that's what Alabama feels like.

Dying in the sanitary environment of a hospital is a relatively new concept. In the late 19th century, dying at a hospital was reserved for people who had nothing and no one. Given the choice, a person wanted to die at home in their bed, surrounded by friends and family.

And when I was young, my family was perfectly nice. I write a lot about it, as you noticed. But it was rather limited. I think, I don't think anyone in my family would really feel I'd done them an injustice by saying that. We didn't see many people. There were many books. It was as if I wanted to get away from home.

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