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I spent the first 33 years of my life with secrets, and lots of them. I spent a great deal of energy worrying over what people thought and obscuring the things I was ashamed of... trying to appear what I thought was normal.

My security comes from my senses, my sensing the direction I should go and suddenly I felt out of tune, out of step with what other people wanted or what other people expected of me.

I was so astonished that another had penetrated so deeply into the secrets of my soul, and that he knew what I did not know myself, that when I recovered from it he had already been long upon the street.

It terrified me to have an idea that was solely mine to be no longer a part of my mind, but totally public.

I just knew at an early time in my life how important privacy was.

I discovered the National Coalition Against Censorship when I felt totally alone in my fight to protect intellectual freedom, and that group changed my life. I was no longer alone.

I remember keeping a lot of journals and diaries and trying to form a complete thought just based off of those immediate, raw feelings. If anything, I was conscious about how I just always wanted to be as honest as possible, no matter how vulnerable it would make me seem.

When I am out and about I feel watched. It's become second nature. The only time I get to be private is in my work. That is when I liberate the ego. The blessed-out sensation of liberating the ego.

Privacy is something I have come to respect. I think when I was younger I wanted to tell everybody everything, because I thought I was so damn interesting. Then I heard the snoring.

The secret of how to live without resentment or embarrassment in a world in which I was different from everyone else. was to be indifferent to that difference.