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The secret of how to live without resentment or embarrassment in a world in which I was different from everyone else. was to be indifferent to that difference.

My childhood was bittersweet in many ways. We moved around a lot. By the time I was 10, I had travelled thousands of miles, often on my own. My parents were like my friends, so it felt like I didn't really have parents at all. But in a crazy way that was very liberating. It forced me to be independent, maybe a leader, and certainly a survivor.

I had a beautiful childhood and a lovely childhood. I just didn't like being a child. I didn't like the rank injustice of not being listened to. I didn't like the lack of autonomy.

I went to live on a kibbutz, and I'd idealized the world of collective, agrarian work, where everyone was equal, everyone contributed, that all this awful European intellectual stuff just fell away.

I was angry and frustrated when I was younger and didn't know my place in the world.

I really owe everything to my parents and their devotion and drive to see to it that their children had the education which led to the opportunities that they never were able to have.

The atmosphere at my school was very competitive. Young girls were competing with each other every day for status, for leadership, for the affection of the teachers. I hated it.

I would not take for granted that my personal life - because I knew better than anybody - that it was just a life. It was surprisingly an ordinary life.

The truth is that since childhood I had cultivated an existential independence. It came from perceiving the adults around me as unreliable, and without it I felt I wouldn't have survived. I cared deeply for everyone in my family, but in the end I depended on myself.