I got up one Christmas morning and we didn't have nothing to eat. We didn't have an apple we didn't have an orange we didn't have a cake we didn't have nothing.
I was in Paris at an English-language bookstore. I picked up a volume of Dickinson's poetry. I came back to my hotel read 2 000 of her poems and immediately began composing in my head. I wrote down the melodies even before I got to a piano.