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The loss of a child is my greatest nightmare.

It's a sad moment, really, when parents first become a bit frightened of their children.

The loss of a child is the most terrifying place for me to go.

When my son was born, and after a day of lying-in I was told that I could leave the hospital and take him home, I burst into tears. It wasn't the emotion of the moment: it was shock and horror.

If watching your child die is a parent's worst nightmare, imagine having to tell your other child that his sister is dead... Although I am certain that he cried, that we all cried, what I remember more is how we collapsed into each other, as if the weight of our loss literally crushed us.

As a kid, I was scared of losing my mind. In Terrell, Texas, where I grew up, there was a guy that would walk down the street talking to himself. And I used to watch him and feel uneasy. And there was a sanitarium where people would say, 'That's where all the crazy people go.' It really sort of frightened me.

My childhood gave me a very powerful sense of being spooked. I didn't know whether what I was seeing were sensory images of other people's unhappiness. Perhaps that was just the way the world manifested itself to me.

I saw 'The Exorcist' at the cinema when I was quite young, maybe 14. When I went back home, my mum and dad weren't in, so I had to wait for them on the main road. I were too scared to enter the house.

My mother had been blind as a child. And so, blindness was something that has long fascinated me, but also it's something I find really, really scary.

Every parent has those moments where they look at their child and think, 'There's a demon in those eyes and no one can see it but me!'