People ask 'do you make a conscious effort not to swear?' - if you're doing silly stuff you're not tempted to put swearing in. All the comics from my childhood, who were funny without swearing, were the people that influenced me. What I do is quite traditional anyway.
My childhood beliefs became so much a part of me that even today I find myself automatically living by a personal standard of conduct which can only be explained as resulting from my religious training.
Sure, my childhood was unusual. All these eccentric, wild people frequented our home: rock stars, drag queens, models, bikers, freaks. But I was not this little rich girl. My mom and I lived in an apartment.
The books I loved in childhood - the first loves - I've read so often that I've internalized them in some really essential way: they are more inside me now than out.
My mother had a very difficult childhood, having seen her own mother kill herself. So she didn't always know how to be the nurturing mother that we all expect we should have.
Adulthood is the ever-shrinking period between childhood and old age. It is the apparent aim of modern industrial societies to reduce this period to a minimum.
These days, there are a great many books about childhood trauma and its effects, but at the time all the experts agreed that one should forget about it as quickly as possible and pick up where you left off.
