I was here for a reason. There was something I was meant not simply to be, but to do- and it wasn't to run or hide or give up the minute things seemed terrifying and impossible.

I grew up feeling like a weirdo like many kids do. But I was lucky to find my own home for peculiar children. I went to a school for the gifted in Florida, and it was full of kids who - we were all strange together. And that was a real blessing.

I have an unusual hobby: I collect pictures of people I don't know. It started when I was a kid growing up in South Florida, the land of junk stores, garage sales, and flea markets, as a kind of coping mechanism.

It's easy to say you don't care about money when you have plenty of it.

What I believe when it comes to big things in life, there are no accidents. Everything happens for a reason. You are here for a reason - and it's not to fail and die.

There was a girl who could fly, a boy who had bees living inside him, a brother and sister who could lift boulders over their heads.

I liked this idea: that peculiarness wasn't a deficiency, but an abundance; that it wasn't we who lacked something normals had, but they who lacked peculiarness. That we were more, not less.