The littlest thing can have the strongest connection when you're grieving. Your Proustian, poetic nerve is turned up to ten.

I'm into people's emotional lives and relationships and the complications of living. That's my turf.

Sadness is a super important thing not to be ashamed about but to include in our lives. One of the bigger problems with sadness or depression is there's so much shame around it. If you have it you're a failure. You are felt as being very unattractive.

My dad's gay experiences really had a very positive influence on me and my straight relationships - how to better accept all the weirdness and ambiguity and ups and downs and paradoxes. I knew from the beginning I was writing about love.

Over and over again, I'm trying to express or communicate these big and small struggles to the world, and really to myself.

L.A. is so isolated and unhip in a way; it gives you room to figure out who you are and explore more personal stuff.

We never did things as we were supposed to do. That was part of our ethic. We did what felt right to us, not what someone told us we should do.