I hated being a child because to be a child means that you are essentially the property of your parents, benevolently or not.

I absorbed the lie that any smart woman would use birth control and be responsible for her body. Obviously that's not true.

Art is for the elite because it has a very high price-point of entry. And when one is in that social strata, they look down at illustrators because they just draw things directly for a few hundred dollars and that's seen as being a bit grubby. Galleries allow artists to stay relatively divorced from the financial aspects of their trade. I am lucky because I do fine art, and that is half of my living. And then illustration provides the other half.

New York makes me swoony and in love. The New York of the 1880s was a place where black eye fixers did a brisk business and people were routinely killed for their shoes. But, the constant aspiration of the city never changes.

Working a model liberated me from ever having to hold a day job. I transitioned from doing that to working full-time as an artist. If you're 19 and living cheap, being an artist model can sustain you. I dropped out of college at 21 and my illustration hadn't yet taken off. It is more than working in a store. It is a hard way to make a living but you earn more than in a similarly unskilled job.

I hated being a child because to be a child means that you are essentially the property of your parents, benevolently or not.

Maybe you shouldn't be working as a jailer in Guantánamo. Maybe that's why you feel spiritually unhealthy.