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I never sit down to write anything personal unless I know the subject is going to go beyond my own experience and address something larger and more universal.

Writing is always personal in some way but not always in a direct way.

When you write, no matter what, it ends up personal.

For me, when I'm writing something really personal, I don't feel good about it. It's weird that people can connect to it and like something that came from a really crap place. You have to be quite brave to write about something that you honestly feel and think.

It's so much easier to write for a person in your life than to write for some imagined readership, so you write something that's more intimate and true.

Really, as a writer, I believe that if you're going to write about your own life, you need to do it as honestly and candidly as you are capable.

I do write a lot from personal experience, but I also embellish a bit.

The essay is one of my favourite forms of writing, and I feel like what's inside is really personal, more so than with shorter pieces.

Mostly, I don't write overtly personal stuff.

Of course, sometimes when you write personally, you are also writing about society, obliquely reflecting topical issues, but not in a way that people would expect you to or in the way that someone trying to make a point would.