If you look at 'Doctor Who,' it's a Time Lord in a blue box who travels around the universe. It's a silly concept, but it's one of the most brilliant, emotional experiences because it's sort of about what is humanity.

It doesn't matter if it's aliens or emotional weapons or whatever - it's still a real story about big feelings that have to come out.

When you're writing about superpowers, you're writing about power. When you're writing about immortals, you're writing about mortality.

I am talking to you, but the moment I am talking to you, the universe is being created and destroyed.

Everyone reads Harper Lee personally. For me, 'Mockingbird' was about admitting my own hyphenated identity - about loving and hating my world, about both belonging and not belonging to the community I came from.

We kept my middle schooler home from school for three days before we turned in our final draft because she was so mean and so brutal at editing out all the cheesy bits. She would roll her eyes and make fun of us, and it was what we needed.