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I had these experiences as a kid; I remember certain things happening in school that were horrifying that I would see, certain things of violence or certain things of cruelty, but around that, something might happen afterwards to cause everyone to laugh, and that always blew me away.

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!'

My dad was a very violent, frightening and dangerous guy. Next to him, I was this vague kind of kid who walked around, as I still do, gathering impressions.

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.

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

I had a very vivid, almost hallucinatory moment in which I was engaged in a dialogue with my father.

I saw my mother crying for the first time, which made a huge impression on me, when I came home from kindergarten, and she was watching TV because JFK - that Irish Catholic president that we loved - had been killed.

I grew up being terrified of my parents, particularly my father figures.

When I was a kid, my mother's parenting style teetered between benign neglect and intense bouts of violence.