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Until I was six years old we lived in the projects, then my two brothers and three sisters and I moved to a three-bed that my mother's father built.

I lived with my mom in a really small apartment. My bedroom was like in the living room. That's why I still love to sleep on couches now.

My parents were brutal to each other, so I slept in the basement by an old coal-fired furnace. I became a street kid. Occasionally, I'd live with aunts or uncles, then I'd run away to live in the woods, trapping and hunting game to survive. The wilderness pulled at me; still does.

My father was a misanthrope who slept all day and stayed up all night so that he wouldn't have to see people. He ran a business with a large staff but would go there at night and leave things for them to do during the day when he wasn't there.

When I was nine years old, my family lost our home, and the six of us moved into my grandparents' converted garage.

I realized that my mother was at the center of my work, because now that my mother is no longer there, there's nobody left.

We slept in the park before we had a house, and eventually we shared a home - my parents, my grandparents and five uncles, my family, all of us - on White Oaks Street by Magnolia Street near the railroad. Those were hard times, but I loved living there.

We were so poor that my mother would often leave me in a foster home until she could raise enough money to rent rooms for us.