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My friends never talk to me about my poetry because they're embarrassed that I write it or they're embarrassed by what I write about which are not such extraordinarily terrifying things, but they are the state of human existence.

It is scary to write - period - for me, but once you get past the idea that it's scary to write, I still can only be who I am. As a writer, my job, to me, is to expose myself - to really sort of dig in and find out who I am and then put it on the page.

Writing is a fine therapy for people who are perpetually scared of nameless threats... for jittery people.

Writers sometimes write things for me and I like to see what they write because I want to see what their take on my delivery is or what they think that I can do with something. So I kind of leave that to them.

My entire career, in fiction or nonfiction, I have reported and written about people who are not like me.

I won't let people write anything they want to about me.

Some people say, 'Write what you know.' My thing is, 'Write what scares you.'

I don't write that much horror. People tell me my books are scary, but they're not really; I don't go there.

I'm never nervous about being vulnerable with my songwriting because my favorite artists are ones that are vulnerable. I want people to feel like they know me.