My father was always talking about God, and I idolized my father, so I'd spend hours trying to have mental telepathy with God.

So my last image was as the first. A sleeping youth cloaked in light, who opened his eyes with a smile of recognition for someone who had never been a stranger.

As an artist, I never wanted to be fettered by gender nor recognized or defined as a female poet, musician or singer. They don't do that with men - nobody says Picasso, the male artist. Curators call me up and say, "We want your work to be in a show about women artists," and I'm like, why? For Christ's sake, do we have to attach a gender onto everything?

What a model of an artist was for me was an artist who worked. Picasso was the ultimate model, because the work ethic he had.

What is the soul? What color is it? I suspected my soul, being mischievous, might slip away while I was dreaming and fail to return. I did my best not to fall asleep, to keep it inside of me where it belonged.

There are so many great 19th-century photographers, and it's really my favorite period, but the amateurs did such beautiful work.

Why can't I write something that would awake the dead? That pursuit is what burns most deeply.