I was feeling like I'd been born in the wrong place at the wrong time with the wrong people. I don't believe that anymore, not coincidentally two years after writing Eileen. I think that was the driving curiosity for me, thinking about real and fictional characters who could respond to that problem.

I don't think there's anything wrong with pity. Like if you saw a dog having just been hit by a car, you would pity that dog. But then what do you do? Do you leave it there to get run over by more cars, or do you step into traffic and hold up your hand? "Stop! An animal has been hit!" and carry the thing to safety?

I had to brainwash myself, like what I was doing was going to be really, really good, and then just accept whatever happened.

For me writing isn't a mental exercise, it's barely even a literary exercise, it feels like a spiritual experience.

If you look at the horror genre, that work is all about making people uncomfortable by stimulating our fear of death.

I was the first person in my family born in the United States. My mom is from Croatia, and my dad is from Iran. They met at music school in Belgium. I grew up as a pianist.

Anybody that I like that you talk to about me will probably agree that when I'm hanging out with someone one-on-one, I have a tendency to build this attitude toward the world outside of us, it's us and them. I'm with you here, and you're with me, and we are in the club and everybody else out there is in that shitty club. The positive is I make people feel really special, and I also make some people really uncomfortable and judged, and I'm working on that.