I had a really happy childhood - my siblings were great, my mother was very fanciful, and I loved to read. But there was always financial strife.

Hung-up women can't produce anything but mediocre art, and there ain't no room for mediocre art.

I'm not really a nostalgic person.

I never really wanted to be a singer - not with any longevity. But I always wanted to be a writer.

Finally, by the sea, where God is everywhere, I gradually calmed.

Yet you could feel a vibration in the air, a sense of hastening. It had started with the moon, inaccessible poem that it was. Now men had walked upon it, rubber treads on a pearl of the gods. Perhaps it was an awareness of time passing, the last summer of the decade. Sometimes I just wanted to raise my hands and stop. But stop what? Maybe just growing up.

For life is the best thing we have in this existence. And if we should desire to believe in something, it should be a beacon within. This beacon being the sun, sea, and sky, our children, our work, our companions and, most simply put, the embodiment of love.