Old maids, having never bent their temper or their lives to other lives and other tempers, as woman's destiny requires, have for the most part a mania for making everything about them bend to them.
As children, we looked up to our maids and our nannies, who were playing in some ways the role of our mothers. They were paid to be nice to us, to look after us, teach us things and take time out of their day to be with us. As a child you think of these people as an extension of your mother.
I don't have maids or servants, and my husband and I love waking up early and going to the 24-hour supermarket when there is nobody else there.
When I started, it was all meter maids or the sassy nurse, or the sassy receptionist in the hospital. And I felt like: Are those the only jobs that large, black women have?
Men are April when they woo, December when they wed. Maids are May when they are maids, but the sky changes when they are wives.
Maids in India have egos. Big egos. They do not like being spoken to curtly, and they do not like to be abruptly instructed by a woman they do not know. They come with the feeling that they already know everything. So while training them to do things your way, speak gently, and when they do it right, appreciate it.
With 'Titanic,' you have all the first-class passengers interwoven with wonderful stories about the maids and the engineers, the people downstairs in the galleys.
Listen, I didn't know how to make coffee when I came to the United States. Because in Colombia the maids do it.
When I was a kid, I'd wake up extraordinarily early every morning and turn on the television, scanning for episodes of 'The Jetsons.' For some reason, I loved the notion of a future where there would be flying cars, supercomputers, and most of all, robot maids to take care of the chores.
To this day I clean better than most maids.