When once I got to America I fell in love with hippie culture, and I've always wanted to live in the country and grow organic vegetables.

I had been a girl of whom certain things were expected, none of them too bad: a career as a nurse, for example; a sense of duty to my parents; obedience to the law and worship of convention. But in one year of being away from home, that girl had gone out of existence.

That is how I came to think that heavy and hard was the beginning of living, real living; and though I might not end up with a mark on my cheek, I had no doubt that I would end up with a mark somewhere.

The photograph of my brother that is in this album shows a young man, beautiful and perfect in the way of young people, for young people are always perfect and beautiful until they are not, until the moment they just are not.

I would be lost without the feeling of antagonism that people have towards me. I write out of defiance.

I've never let the criticism deter me.

I was given a dictionary when I was seven, and I read it because I had nothing else to read. I read it the way you read a book.