I think, probably when I was 15 or so, I was going through a really hard time with my family, and I just felt really helpless - I didn't know how to put anything I was feeling into words, and I was really confused, and I felt like nobody would hear me, but I didn't even know what to say.
My parents have worked their asses off their whole entire lives, they still do, and I never felt like anything would be handed to me. I never felt sorry for myself. I felt like, "Wow, this is incredible. I'm able to do this for myself." I think once you have that sense of empowerment at a young age and you allow your children to have that empowerment, it will fuel them for a lifetime.
A lot of people would write to me long stories from their lives, and I felt they were thinking of me as some sort of treasure chest to keep their secrets. I felt like sometimes they would tell me stories they wouldn't tell anybody else in the whole world. And I loved these stories.
I just started trying to figure out how to write [something] which was unlike anything anybody had ever seen, and once I felt like I had figured that out I tried to figure out what kind of book I could write that would be unlike anything anybody had ever seen. When I started writing A Million Little Pieces I felt like it was the right story with the style I had been looking for, and I just kept going.
When I was at home, I felt loved and safe. My sisters were always a safe haven for me. I knew they would always play with me and make me feel like I was one of them.
I always felt like I was healthy; I never felt like anything was wrong with me. Until the morning that I had a massive heart attack. On the golf course, by myself.
I started watching so many different types of women, saw all the complexities of them, all the ways and the look and shapes they could be, and I felt it was missing for me in American film. I didn't see anybody I was watching in movies that felt like me. I felt rather tortured and lonely about it.
My mother told me, you don't have to put anything in your mouth you don't want to. Then she made me eat broccoli, which felt like double standards.
I never felt I had anything to hide. I never felt being gay was anything to be ashamed of, so I never felt apologetic. I didn't have issues with it, didn't grow up with any religion, so I didn't have any religious, you know, issues to deal with as far as homosexuality is concerned. So, I accepted it very easily. For me, it wasn't that big a deal.
I would go into periods of depression in my life, and I would feel so alone. I felt that there was no one who understood how I felt, either on TV or in music, and writing really helped me change what I thought and how I felt about myself.
I put a tremendous amount of pressure on myself. I felt like I shouldn't have to audition for anything and all that. And that energy did not serve me at all.
I feel a whole country growing inside me, thousands of years, millions of people, stupid, crazy, shrewd people, and all of them me. I never felt like that before, I never felt that there was anything inside me, even myself.
Okay, let’s put it this way. I would like to sleep with you. But it’s alright if I don’t sleep with you. What I’m saying is I’d like to be as fair as possible. I don’t want to force anything on anybody, any more than I’d want anything forced on me. It’s enough that I feel your presence or see your commas swirling around me.
I understood that there would be some backlash, and that scared me, honestly. But deep down, I felt like it was the right thing to do. And if I was to run away from what I felt in my soul was the right thing to do, that would make me a coward. I can’t live with that. God wouldn’t be able to put me where I am today, and as far as I’ve come in life, if I was a coward.
I always felt I was wounded. That I was no good, a piece of crap, and that I wouldn't amount to anything, because that's what my father always told me. I just felt like I didn't belong anywhere.
Their leaving made me melancholy, though I also felt something like relief when they disappeared into the dark trees. I hadn't needed to get anything from my pack; I'd only wanted to be alone. Alone had always felt like an actual place to me, as if it weren't a state of being, but rather a room where I could retreat to be who I really was.