I think it's child abuse to have someone in the public eye too young. Society basically values wealth and fame and power at the cost of well-being. In the case of a child, it's at the cost of someone's natural development. It's already hard enough to develop.

To me the biggest irony of this lifetime that I'm living is that for someone who thrives in the public eye in the creative ways that I do, I actually don't enjoy being in the public eye.

Closing a public library is child abuse, really, because it hinders child development.

Ageism works in both directions. As a teenager in the public eye, people would talk condescendingly to me. When you get older there's this feeling that you have to start carving up your face and body. Right now I'm in the middle ground - I think women in their thirties are taken seriously.

I think a common misperception about attuning and tending to a child's needs so constantly is that they don't grow in their independence, but I think that the opposite is true.

We are supposed to call poison medicine and we wonder why we're always sick.