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My father leaving the family shaped who I was and how I looked at the world. By the same token, my father telling me fairy tales that he had made up shaped me profoundly, too.

I had a very vivid, almost hallucinatory moment in which I was engaged in a dialogue with my father.

In my own life, I believe it was an early education in poetical metaphor that helped me to grapple with and make sense of all the difficult and traumatic things that were to come.

I need no dictionary of quotations to remind me that the eyes are the windows of the soul.

I'll never forget the first time I saw someone who had died. It was my grandfather. And I knelt next to his coffin. And all I could do was eye level was look at his hands. They were enormous hands. And all I could think was, 'Those hands dug freedom for me.'

My goal is to create a metaphor that changes our reality by charming people into considering their world in a different way.

Why would one ever be so insane as to ditch a perfectly beautiful metaphor? Cut back, of course, prune if you like, so that the best metaphors are clear and sparkling. But I will throw out unread the book that promises me no metaphors inside.

I pressed my father's hand and told him I would protect his grave with my life. My father smiled and passed away to the spirit land.

I had very literal parents and I wanted to survive with metaphor and art, and there was a real sense of shame around it.