I think you're conditioned, especially in America, that there is this line you have to walk down. Anybody who wants to move off that path at any point in their life is my hero. Anybody who goes off that path has to wrestle with that.

I'm not macho. I'm very open about things. I don't try to hide my feelings.

I remember my parents yelling at each other and at me from an early age, and I remember a lot of things smashing. I try to look for the happy memories from the brief time my parents were married, and I can't really recall that. From the start things were messed up, and I just kept moving through the years and trying to pick out the little bits of evidence that would help me prove to myself that it wasn't my doing. But it took finding out somebody really does love me, who's not my parents or a relative, to really know that I was loveable.

You can always be writer. It's not so much a metamorphosis as it is finding what you want.

There are people that will try to hurt you and hold you down.

I've spent the majority of my life estranged from either one or both of my parents, and I've really had a lot of time to break down all the reasons why. There was something buried inside of me that said, I've got to kind of unravel the reasons why I don't talk to them; why not just one, but both of my parents and I have these really messed up relationships. And why I've been so fractured all these years. I got to the point where I thought, I was not the best kid. I openly admit that. But then I realized it doesn't matter. I was a kid!

Movies and novels, the two things that informed and taught me the most, are forms of escapism. I thought that was how life could look if you wanted it to.