Parents shouldn't assume children are made out of sugar candy and will break and collapse instantly. Kids don't. We do.

All I wanted was to be straight so my parents could be happy. They never, never, never knew.

The magic of childhood is the strangeness of childhood — the uniqueness that makes us see things that other people don't see.

To be a healthy person, you have to be sympathetic to the child you once were and maintain the continuity between you as a child and you as an adult.

You can start making up any kind of story if you want to.

And the walls became the world all around.

Art has always been my salvation. And my gods are Herman Melville, Emily Dickinson, Mozart. I believe in them with all my heart. And when Mozart is playing in my room, I am in conjunction with something I can’t explain — I don’t need to. I know that if there’s a purpose for life, it was for me to hear Mozart. Or if I walk in the woods and I see an animal, the purpose of my life was to see that animal. I can recollect it, I can notice it. I’m here to take note of. And that is beyond my ego, beyond anything that belongs to me, an observer, an observer.