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My grandmother had the most dramatic effect on my life because she set me in one direction, and I had to go back the other direction for my sanity, and for my ability to be a social human being.

My imagination, my ability to understand the way love and people grow over time, how passion can surprise and renew, utterly failed me.

That weird dark energy - when I was a kid, I didn't know what it was. I just had to 'thrash it out,' as my mother called it. I became quite intolerable, creatively and artistically, with other people. I wanted nothing more than to be part of a group, and yet I couldn't help alienating people.

I see my upbringing as a great success story. By disciplining me, my parents inculcated self-discipline. And by restricting my choices as a child, they gave me so many choices in my life as an adult. Because of what they did then, I get to do the work I love now.

The difficulties which I meet with in order to realize my existence are precisely what awaken and mobilize my activities, my capacities.

When it came to my childhood - growing up in a single-parent home, often struggling financially - my mother definitely instilled in me and my siblings this strength, this will, to just continue to survive and succeed.

Truly, from a very early age, I started distancing myself from other kids, not out of willingness, but just out of the nature of my energy. I liked to do things solely, and I already had a taste of the quest for perfection, which is unusual in a little kid.

My childhood gave me resilience - and there's little that can surprise me in life.

Having a baby dragged me, kicking and screaming, from the world of self-absorption.