I starved and slept on park benches. I wrapped myself in the pages of my manuscript to keep warm. For two and a half years I took odd jobs; nothing was going to deter me.

The Rift, which was well over a thousand pages of manuscript, took two years.

I really believe i was happier when i slept on a park bench in Central Park than during all the years of the 'perfect lover' stuff.'

I never starved myself.

can still sit on a park bench in a playground all day.

I lived on nothing for years - squatted where I lived and where I worked, stole electricity, made things from stuff I found in skips, used paper that had been discarded - you do everything you can do to keep going and not have to get a job.