Diagnoses exist to help get people services they need - but there's no such thing as mental illness. We're all mentally ill.

It's an important moment as a reader, I think, when you can forget the question of whether you need to know what happened. Some people really want hard explanations. I'm the other way. I like mysteries. I don't want to frustrate people. I don't want people to feel like they got no answers, but I want to approach the mystery and sit with it.

What's scary is the unknown, the stuff you can't put your finger on.

Everybody is in various states of needing to transcend something. I believe in mental health care, but when we call people "crazy," we exclude them from our circle.

I think listening to a lot of Lou Reed when I was a teenager is what encouraged me to just sing however felt good to me.

North Carolina was on the vanguard of being for [ trans rights ], and that's why we're seeing this push back. The conservatives noticed that there had been a lot of progress and they tried to tamp it down.

There are so many ways to respond to music besides feeling like someone's communicating with you. It gives me a charge.