Quote

I was brought up on a farm in Southwest France, eating farm-fresh produce three times a day. It was paradise on Earth, and it shaped my eating habits and my sense of taste.

I used to watch my grandmother make fancy, Julia Child-style beef bourguignon. And growing up in New York City, I was exposed to many cultures. I experimented with Puerto Rican and Jamaican food.

I became a fanatic about healthy food in 1944.

I was a mother who worked ridiculously hard to keep catastrophe at bay. I didn't allow my kids to eat hamburgers for fear of E. coli. I didn't allow them to play with rope, string, balloons - anything that might strangle them. They had to bite grapes in half, avoid lollipops, eat only when I could watch them.

I was very conscious of the world being this very crazed place that demanded explanation. I didn't see a whole lot of people who looked like me doing it on television.

When I was paralysed by polio at 13, I went into an isolation hospital and couldn't sit up, so I only took liquid food from spouted cups which the masked nurses would bring in and feed to me. I saw my parents only through glass; we couldn't touch.

I would never be able to lead the insane lifestyle I do, traveling all over the world, if I wasn't eating food that was simple and healthy.

As long as I had easy access to psychedelics at the government-sponsored research project, most of my energy went into psychedelic sessions.

In '73 I photographed the cannibals in New Guinea. They treated me OK but they didn't make you feel relaxed... I managed to escape unscathed though, I'm pretty good at that.

I became almost immediately fascinated by the possibilities of trying out all conceivable reactions with them, some leading to explosions, others to unbearable poisoning of the air in our house, frightening my parents.