It terrified me to have an idea that was solely mine to be no longer a part of my mind, but totally public.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
The public made me and then encouraged me for many years, and my future even now depends upon it.
I did have strange ideas during certain periods of time.
Then I realized that secrecy is actually to the detriment of my own peace of mind and self, and that I could still sustain my belief in privacy and be authentic and transparent at the same time. It was a pretty revelatory moment, and there's been a liberating force that's come from it.
My great fear of being attacked or trivialized by my contemporaries made me concentrate on what I was trying to do as a writer. It forced me to draw some conclusions that were my own.
I hadn't planned on or expected to have a public dimension in my life.
My private life became public.
For most of my life, I deliberately led a private life in the public eye.
When you realize that you have a little germ of an idea that has - I suppose I can only say, has to me - a little taste of magic to it. You have this idea that there are millions, literally, of people listening to it at the same time as you and that little strange telepathy of a feeling that you're sharing something live with all those people.
I think it was when I realised I could talk anybody into doing just about anything I wanted them to.
I mean, that was a throwaway thought, because my focus was - my intent and my focus was to never go public.