My parents gave up a lot to bring me up in the little house on the prairie, and I wasn't prepared to make those sacrifices, nor was the generation before me and the generation after.

I am a sweet old softy, but it took toughness to get through what I went through.

A tattoo doesn't make you look like an individual.

Largely this is a class thing - writers tend to be cosseted little middle-class kiddies who think that the world owes them a royalty cheque. But just doing it - being in your room for years on end, locked in your head, alone with invented ghosts - it weakens and softens the body. And I know I can't just live in my head.

When he was born, I looked at my little boy and felt an unconditional love I never knew was inside me. As he grew, and I watched him stagger about, squeak his first words, and turn into a beautiful little boy, that feeling did not change.

Tattoos are so widespread, so ugly and so very, very permanent. You can, in theory, have them removed - but a large chunk of your living flesh will go with it.

Home is oneness, home is my original nature. It is right here, simply in what is. There is nowhere else I have to go, and nothing else I have to become.