Quote

I can't bear the thought of my mother having to push me around in a wheelchair. I'd rather die quickly.

I don't want a life without my mom in it, but I'm not someone who curls up in the fetal position and says, 'Mommy, take care of me!' I don't like people catering to me. It feels so awkward and uncomfortable.

I think about how best to live my grandmother's twin mantras that 'Life is not a dress rehearsal' and 'Life is not about what happens to you, but what you do with what happens to you.'

My grandmother, who passed away at the beginning of November, had a core adage in her life that 'life is not about what happens to you but about what you do with what happens to you.' She recently had been cajoling me and challenging me to do more with my life. To lead more of a purposefully public life.

It's really sort of morbid, but she said her mother wanted to see me all her life. And when she died, she made just one request: that a picture of me be put into her casket. So somewhere in England, I'm in a casket.

I lost my mother when I was 7 and they put her in a mental hospital. My brother and I watched her being taken away in a strait jacket. That's something you never forget. And my stepmother was like in the movie 'Precious.' I couldn't handle it. So I said to myself, 'I don't have a mother. I don't need one. I'm going to let music be my mother.'

I was kind of a misfit, and when my mother died, I had to become an adult, something that I never thought I would ever be.

Like my mother, I was always saying, 'I'll fix my life one day.' It became clear when I saw her die without fulfilling her dreams that my time was now or maybe never.

I didn't want to be the aunt where you come over and can't sit on the sofa.