One set of circumstances does not complete you. Maybe nothing ever does. So you work on your life and you work on your 'work' and you try to live every single day like it's your last. And you try to be better, to yourself and to others. I don't always succeed. But I try and it's my goal.

Part of the reason I sort of shot out like a cannon out of Michigan and left home at such an early age is because I had to feel independent.

Sometimes you want to go for a walk and you don't want to be watched. You just want to be anonymous and blend in. Especially when I travel, I feel that way, because I can't really go out and see a city the way other people can and I miss out on a lot.

I don't take drugs. I never did. All the feelings that drugs are supposed to produce in you - confidence or energy - I can produce naturally.

Honestly, I don't read newspapers, magazines, whatever. They're just not part of my lexicon. I don't want to be manipulated, or manipulated about other people's work.

Trying to be a professional dancer, paying my rent by posing nude for art classes, staring at people staring at me naked. Daring them to think of me as anything but a form they were trying to capture with their pencils and charcoal. I was defiant. Hell-bent on surviving. On making it. But it was hard and it was lonely, and I had to dare myself every day to keep going.

I feel just as hungry today as I did the day I left home.