I have survivor skills. Some of that is superficial - what I present to people outwardly - but what makes people resilient is the ability to find humour and irony in situations that would otherwise overpower you.

And now I have to stop. Because every time I remember this, I have to cry a little by myself. I don't know why something that made me so happy then feels so sad now. Maybe that is the way it is with the best memories.

We are living in a world where everything is false. The society is like bright paint applied on top of rotten wood.

how can the world in all its chaos come up with so many coincidences, so many similarities and exact opposites?

In America nobody says you have to keep the circumstances somebody else gives you.

I think I've always been somebody, since the deaths of my father and brother, who was afraid to hope. So, I was more prepared for failure and for rejection than for success.

I learned to forgive myself, and that enabled me to forgive my mother as a person.