I have been a believer in the magic of language since, at a very early age, I discovered that some words got me into trouble and others got me out.

They thought to use and shame me but I win out by nature, because a true freak cannot be made. A true freak must be born.

Can you be happy with the movies, and the ads, and the clothes in the stores, and the doctors, and the eyes as you walk down the street all telling you there is something wrong with you? No. You cannot be happy. Because, you poor darling baby, you believe them.

I come from a family of great readers and storytellers.

When your mama was the geek, my dreamlets," Papa would say, "she made the nipping off of noggins such a crystal mystery that the hens themselves yearned toward her, waltzing around her, hypnotized with longing.

American culture is torn between our long romance with violence and our terror of the devastation wrought by war and crime and environmental havoc.

In our struggle to restrain the violence and contain the damage, we tend to forget that the human capacity for aggression is more than a monstrous defect, that it is also a crucial survival tool.