I'm proud to be a freak of nature.

I leaned my head back and closed my eyes. "We're supposed to be celebrating our two-week anniversary tonight."
"Uh, news for you, honey - two weeks is no anniversary."
"What should I tell him? I don't even want to go."
"Tell him you just got a new bra and it's shy around strangers.

I think that old magic draws much of its strength from that acknowledgment: that we are a part of that world.

A true freak cannot be made. A true freak must be born.

Freaks was a thing I photographed a lot. It was one of the first things I photographed and it had a terrific kind of excitement for me. I just used to adore them. I still do adore some of them. I don't quite mean they're my best friends but they made me feel a mixture of shame and awe. There's a quality of legend about freaks. Like a person in a fairy tale who stops you and demands that you riddle. Most people go through life dreading they'll have a traumatic experience. Freaks were born with their trauma. They've already passed their test in life. They're aristocrats.

The color of one's creed, neckties, eyes, thoughts, manners, speech, is sure to meet somewhere in time of space with a fatal objection from a mob that hates that particular tone. And the more brilliant, the more unusual the man, the nearer he is to the stake. Stranger always rhymes with danger. The meek prophet, the enchanter in his cave, the indignant artist, the nonconforming little schoolboy, all share in the same sacred danger. And this being so, let us bless them, let us bless the freak; for in the natural evolution of things, the ape would perhaps never have become man had not a freak appeared in the family.