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In my position, I could be a debutante. But we only got to this position by being a politically active family.

My father was and is a great father. My father always wanted to do stand-up. He wanted to be an actor. But instead he did two jobs. He did customer service at a hospital and he worked as a waiter at night. He pretty much sacrificed everything for his daughters.

I would say that social work began in my mind in the Unitarian Church when I was ten or twelve years old, and I started to do things that I thought would help other people.

Growing up, I was a target. Speaking the right way, standing the right way, holding your wrist the right way. Every day was a test, and there were a thousand ways to fail, a thousand ways to betray yourself, to not live up to someone else's standards of what was accepted, of what was normal.

My father was very intense, passionate and over-the-top. He was my hero and my tyrant.

My father was a man of great charity towards the poor, and compassion for the sick, and also for servants; so much so, that he never could be persuaded to keep slaves, for he pitied them so much: and a slave belonging to one of his brothers being once in his house, was treated by him with as much tenderness as his own children.

What motivated me? My mother. My mother was an immigrant woman, a peasant woman, struggled all her life, worked in the garment center.

I was brought up in a very ordinary family, in fact, a worker's family. Both my father and mother were ordinary citizens.

I was the hero of the young insurgent working class art movement.

Father's ideals became part of me and still are today. His reserve, deeply rooted liberal views, his provocative humour, his passion for work and love of risk are also mine.