I try to be available for life to happen to me. We're in this life, and if you're not available, the sort of ordinary time goes past and you didn’t live it. But if you're available, life gets huge. You're really living it.

I'll try anything once, twice if I like it, three times to make sure.

When they asked me what I wanted to be I said I didn’t know. "Oh, sure you know," the photographer said. "She wants," said Jay Cee wittily, "to be everything.

Bury me smilin' with G's in my pocket, Have a party at my funeral let every rapper rock it Let the hoes that I used to know, from way before Kiss me from my head to my toe, Gimme a paper and pen so I can write about my life of sin, Couple bottles of gin, in case I don't get in.

And I can't be running back and fourth forever between grief and high delight.

I tried not to think about my life. I did not have any good solid plans for it long-term - no bad plans either, no plans at all - and the lostness of that, compared with the clear ambitions of my friends (marriage, children, law school), sometimes shamed me. Other times in my mind I defended such a condition as morally and intellectually superior - my life was open and ready and free - but that did not make it less lonely.