Siri Hustvedt

As one of four daughters, I grew up with an imaginary brother - wondering what it would have been like if one of us had been a boy. There's no question that there was a phantom boy child in my imagination when I was young.

Both depression and anxiety disorders, for example, are repeatedly described in the media as 'chemical imbalances in the brain,' as if spontaneous neural events with no relation to anything outside a person's brain cause depression and anxiety.

Sometimes it's even hard to tell the difference between a tic and a compulsion. But while tics stem from an urge in a specific part of the body - either completely unconsciously or through a premonitory sensation that's satisfied only by the tic - OCD bubbles up as conscious thoughts in the mind.

The thrill of a photo-realist painter is if you get really close to the painting, it looks just like a photograph. Whereas in my case, if you get close to my paintings, they totally fall apart - so I'm about as far from a photo-realist as it gets.