Katy skipped over, her low-rise jeans threatening to fall off her skinny hips. With some girls, that was a sexy look. With Katy, it made you nervous.

Sitting and waiting for something to happen was the worst kind of torture.

I'm always in a place that is sincere but conflicted about different things that come with being a Christian and being an active, churchgoing Christian.

It's just so out of control. Life, I mean. The way it flies off in all these different directions without your permission.

Family or love or romance, whatever it is, is not restricted to perfect people. If it were, it wouldn't exist. All of that comes out in my work in some way.

I wouldn't say I'm stuck in my adolescence, but I think, like a lot of people, I carry my teen years with me. I feel really in touch with those feelings, and how intense and complicated life seems in those years.

Life was mostly made up of things you couldn’t control, full of surprises, and they weren’t always good. Life wasn’t what you made it. You were what life made you.