I’ve had many, you know, happy ending sleepovers’in my early youth — my period of exploration. I think that’s essential. Anyone who hasn’t had a gay moment is probably trying to avoid some confrontation with a reality in their life.

I was a cocky kid, and I felt like I was an adult at, like, 9. I think that's because my parents always treated me as an adult.

The most important part of my practice as an artist has been remembering to stay humble. There is so much hurt, so much sorrow, so much pain in the world, and I think when you're born and bred into privilege, it's easier to have a closed perspective on things. But there's this opportunity that's open to all of us to let empathy connect us back to one another.

I always thought it would be really, really cool to play Edgar Allan Poe, because when I was a kid, he was one of the authors who really blew my mind open to all sorts of weird dark and twisted places.

Family is this very deep, complex thing that for most people becomes everything. It informs your entire life.

It's an amazing thing to be able to fall into the world of your childhood fantasy.

Every teenager deals in his or her own sexuality and has to face it and figure out how it can coincide with the rest of their lives in a healthy manner. And try to navigate it in our modern society, which is wrought with stigma and taboo and repression, and sort of as a result, these inner monsters that some teenagers really struggle with.