My small torrent of words dissipated into an elaborate sense of expanding and receding. It was my entrance into the radiance of imagination. This process was especially magnified within the fevers of influenza, measles, chickenpox, and mumps. I got them all and with each I was privileged with a new level of awareness. Lying deep within myself, the symmetry of a snowflake spinning above me, intensifying through my lids, I seized a most worthy souvenir, a shard of heaven’s kaleidoscope.

Social media could be very strong in terms of bringing people together but it also takes up so much of people's time that I wonder if we've lost the ability to daydream.

I just like living in certain atmospheres. Or I just like people as they are.

From very early on in my childhood - four, five years old - I felt alien to the human race. I felt very comfortable with thinking I was from another planet, because I felt disconnected - I was very tall and skinny, and I didn't look like anybody else, I didn't even look like any member of my family.

I don't think the Palestinian people or Afghan children or some other things I'm concerned about are at the top of other people's agendas - not right now, when America is going through such a recession and people are suffering across the board financially. But I think all that will change.

People came at me with all sorts of offers, wanting to make me into a hard-core Cher. I had no desire for any amount of money to be reformed for someone's vision, because in the end, that's what you got: your clay in someone else's hands.

New generations are intoxicated with the idea that they can make their presence known on the Internet. When I was young, there wasn't anything comparable. Very few got their picture in a magazine, fewer made records. We have to stand back and let them get their footing. Hopefully they'll come to the realization that the most important thing is their work and how they conduct themselves.