I still have a photo on my wall of the greatest idol I will ever have in my life and it's myself at eight. Because that's when the forces of imagination have the same value as the real world when they're an instrument of survival: when my mother disappeared and I imagined a mother. That was me at my best.
Words to me were magic. You could say a word and it could conjure up all kinds of images or feelings or a chilly sensation or whatever. It was amazing to me that words had this power.
