Success made me self-sufficient, but it also took away my anonymity. I'm just this quiet nobody, and all of a sudden people are nervous around me. That was kind of weird.
Most writers like to maintain some sort of anonymity. For me, making videos was an assault.
Being the first black Nobel laureate, and the first African, the African world considered me personal property. I lost the remaining shreds of my anonymity, even to walk a few yards in London, Paris or Frankfurt without being stopped.
Anonymous comments? You're not in the arena, man. If you can't say it to me in person in front of my kids, don't say it.
To me, constructive criticism is when people take ownership of their ideas. That's why I don't listen to anything that's anonymous. But it's hard; when there's something hurtful out there, I still want to read it over and over and memorize it and explain my point of view to the person.
I actually went to some Gamblers Anonymous classes, and I sat there for three or four of them, and I'm trying to figure out what I have in similarities with these other people, and I could never find anything. It just seems like it wasn't the right place for me.
I think I'm a very solitary person. To actually not be anonymous is a bit claustrophobic for me.
I guess Twitter is the first thing that has been attractive to me as social media. I never felt the least draw to Facebook or MySpace. I've been involved anonymously in some tiny listservs, mainly in my ceaseless quest for random novelty, and sometimes while doing something that more closely resembles research.
Iād be perfectly happy living anonymously on a ranch in Kentucky, where the only time someone mentioned me was to discuss the crazy lady up the road with all the taxidermy and jerky.
I'll literally pay three Hollywood readers who don't know me to read my scripts under the radar and give cold comments. And at the early screenings of my movies, I'll hand out questionnaires that can be filled out anonymously so people can be brutally honest because, to your face, they won't be.
A lot of the girls were awful, very catty. It was a competitive environment that I didn't like. You have no idea of the anorexia I saw around me.
Anorexia was there for me before I got into modeling, but because of the arena and the demands, the disease really got out of control for me. It's like being an alcoholic and going and being a bartender.
I initially decided to speak about my anorexia and bulimia, partly out of a selfish motivation. I felt I had been scrutinised for my weight and thought, 'At least judge and criticise me on the facts.' There was a freedom with that. Now it's out there, and I just get on with life. I'm at peace with things.
A misperception about anorexia is that you don't eat. Not true. Maybe you eat just 500 calories a day. It would be easy for me to say, 'Why didn't my parents notice?' But I didn't want them to. I made sure to eat half a sandwich around my parents.
Anorexia taught me to love life and to realise that starving yourself to death is a bloody waste of time. It's awful, and it hurts so many people around you. It's a terribly selfish thing to do.
I wasn't strong enough to have an eating disorder. I tried to go anorexic for a good three hours. I ate ice and celery, but that's not even anorexic. And I quit. I was like, 'Ma, can you make me a sandwich? Like, immediately.'
I dare anybody to look at me and say I'm anorexic. I'm so totally not.
I've worked with producers who have told me to lose weight, and I'm not overweight, but they want you to look strange, anorexic, horrible. It's odd. It's like they are exerting a power over women, that they want them to look really frail.
All my life people have made fun of me because I was so skinny. They kind of made me feel bad about it sometimes. I worried that maybe people will think I am really anorexic.
The anorexic body is held in the grip of will alone; its meaning is far from stable. What it says - 'Notice me, feed me, mother me' - is not what it means, for such attentions constitute an agonising test of that will, and also threaten to return the body to the dreaded 'normality' it has been such ecstasy to escape.
