"I was born in 1932, to a father whose parents were Russian-Jewish, and to a mother who was a Kentucky Baptist. The only child of this stormy marriage, I grew up in almost total solitude. I thought I was lonely when I was simply a loner-- and spent much of my childhood daydreaming, writing poems, and creating dramas for my dolls. We lived in California, in a suburb, on a hilltop, and I would spend hours sitting in an almond tree in the back yard--gazing at the glittering city of San Francisco, miles away. I wanted to be a musician, or a dancer, or a poet--anything that would lift me out of what I considered to be a sad life. At night, lying in bed, I would hear the sound of trains passing in the valley, and imagine that I was on one of them. Get away, get away...