As a child, the person I admired most in the world was Lana Turner! She seemed the epitome of glamour, and her glitzy surroundings so enviable, the opposite of my mother's extremely banal taste.

My mother endlessly told me I was too fat, that I wasn't a patch on my sister. It wasn't much fun growing up with her and her almost irrational social climbing in that huge house of my dull stepfather Hughdie Auchincloss in Washington.

As a child, my mother told me lots of fairy stories, many her own invention. She, too, tended to reverse the norm.

I can't say I ever loved my mother; I admired her.

I feel like I'm in my own world: in the world but not a part of it.

My mother was pragmatic, focused and extremely, exceedingly practical, and she was the ultimate self-determining person.