What is the impulse that drove to direct? To me, it seems so immense. Just having a rock 'n' roll band, or to go from the solitude of writing and to having to collaborate, is almost schizophrenic.

I was so involved in my boy-rhythms that I never came to grips with the fact that I was a girl. I was twelve years old when my mother took me inside and said, "You can't be outside wrestling without a T-shirt on." It was a trauma.

There were days, rainy gray days, when the streets of Brooklyn were worthy of a photograph, every window the lens of a Leica, the view grainy and immobile. We gathered our colored pencils and sheets of paper and drew like wild, feral children into the night, until, exhausted, we fell into bed. We lay in each other's arms, still awkward but happy, exchanging breathless kisses into sleep.

I use drugs to work. I never use them to escape or for pleasure. When you turn to drugs, all you're doing is turning inside, anyway. I only use drugs for construction. It's like one of my architectural tools.

A lot of children don't have a developed aesthetic. I did. I made early choices in life, even about cloth; I liked flannel and not polyester.

I didn't write about aspects of my public life because that's a small part of my life.

When I was a kid, I loved Sherlock Holmes. I'm not interested in crimes. I'm interested in the mind of the detective and his process, which to me is a lot like the artist.