“I had a very long home birth. She was almost 10 pounds and did not wan...” — Gaby Hoffmann Quote

I had a very long home birth. She was almost 10 pounds and did not want to come out.

Her mother, Laurie Simmons, is a contemporary artist, and my stepmother, Cindy Sherman, is a photographer, so they've known each other forever. Lena and I were often at the same dinner parties when we were kids.

I grew up with artists and drag queens. These were just my neighbors and friends and the people who are raising me.

I wanted to live in the suburbs and have a white picket fence and my own bedroom. And a staircase - I thought having a staircase meant that you were a normal family. I thought somehow if you could transplant us to the suburbs, we would become a normal family. But in retrospect, I'm so grateful I grew up in the Chelsea.

We are building a country where a person's prospects are determined by their own initiative and hard work and not by the color of their skin, place of birth, gender, language, or income of their parents.

The most important thing to realize is we're not blank slates at birth. We don't start off with nothing in our heads, and then get imprinted entirely by our environment. There's something in our heads on the day we're born, and then we grow up and make choices.

My grandmother gave birth to 13 children and I come from a long line of women who gave birth in their 40s.

Harriet Tubman and Sojourner Truth were slaves by birth, freedom fighters by temperament.