Quote

They would wake me up when I was sleeping, and say sing a song for our friends. I had a sweet voice, I had a nice little tenor voice. God knows what I sang, but my whole family would admire me.

Decades later I would look into my father's eyes and try to reach past the murkiness of Alzheimer's with my words, my apology, hoping that in his heart he heard me and understood.

I'd gone into that restaurant and sat down and the waitress had taken my order and everybody else had seen me with this what must have looked like this creature, this animal, sitting on the top of my head!

My grandmother and I would go see movies, and we'd come back to the apartment - we had a one-room apartment in Hollywood - and I would kind of lock myself in this little dressing room area with a cracked mirror on the door and act out what I had just seen.

I would ask my dad what he did, and he'd say, 'I listen to people's problems.' In some way what he did for a living is in my genes.

As a kid I would be put to bed when my parents had guests and because I was such a show-off I would go to my mum's room, put on her nightdress and Jackie Onassis shawl, run downstairs, go outside, ring the doorbell and pretend to be one of the guests. I'd say, 'Hello, I'm Mrs. So-and-So.'

I would just watch the animals, and their stories would roll out when I wrote.

I would sing to my Beanie Babies, and I sort of created this alternate universe where I was famous, and there were thousands of people that I was singing to.

I had the best of both worlds when I was a kid. I'd spend a quiet week with my mum, then I'd go to my dad's property in the Adelaide Hills, where there were all these kids and animals running around.