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On Thanksgiving Night, 1942, when I was fifteen years old, white racists burned our house to the ground.

I burned down our house, and that put a strain on our family.

The day I was born, my house burnt down; the day I left home, the Twin Towers burnt down; and I lived in a jungle in India at 15.

When I was in my late 30s, I lit a figure on fire on Baker Beach in San Francisco. It was me, a friend, and maybe eight people, tops. There wasn't any premeditation to it at all. It was really just a product of San Franciscan bohemian milieu.

You burned the city of London in our houses and we felt the flames.

I could see flames from the windows of my chambers. For the next three or four days we had major rioting here in Washington and I stayed at the court day and night.

On the last morning of Virginia's bloodiest year since the Civil War, I built a fire and sat facing a window of darkness where at sunrise I knew I would find the sea.

I remember when the candle shop burned down. Everyone stood around singing 'Happy Birthday.'

They were fun days, and we set the town on fire with every movie we did.

I grew up in a small town in Alabama, and there wasn't much in the way of entertainment, so like our older siblings before us, we drove our pickup trucks out into the hayfield and lit a bonfire.