Some people just make me feel mentally endangered. Whatever dark stuff is going on in their head, it's coming at me and I need to escape.

A friend of mine urged me to see my pain as an opportunity. And since the same psychic that contacted Dion Fortune had told me that I was a "teacher" - she didn't mean at Columbia, she meant in the spiritual sense - I decided my affliction was the universe telling me that it was time to stop writing fiction and become the spiritual guru I was clearly meant to be.

If you agree with an outside person's interpretation of you, that's a happy bit of affirmation. It means you're communicating externally what you believe to be true internally. If you disagree, it helps clarify how you understand yourself. And maybe makes you productively question how to improve your communication skills.

The belief that one's suffering has a greater cosmic purpose, and is thus more exciting and more noble, well, it made a lot of sense to me.

I spend far too much time on eBay buying lamps and upholstery remnants.

I'm at that age where I notice friends checking out my face and wondering, Has she been Botoxed? There's a new map there people that are trying to read. I think if I did get any kind of enhancement I would be very public about it. I don't want people wondering - I want them to know.

I used to have a really sharp memory. And its loss has proven destabilizing from an identity perspective.