Nick Flynn

It takes an entire book to tell you what it was like. To see Robert De Niro play your father - it's not a simple answer. To see Julianne Moore play your mother. To see Paul Dano play you - that's an even more inscrutable question... he's amazing, he's totally amazing, but I can't really say if he's a good me or not.

I became an electrician after high school. But I always had this thing in me to write. But it was always a little shameful. To say you were a poet was saying you were kind of crazy, and I carried that around for a long time. I still kind of carry that. And I think it might be true, actually.

Being a pop star is something I don't think I'm very good at. I'm worried it's making me too paranoid, because all of a sudden, life has become this constant assessment. When you put something out there and people get to hear it, then those people react to it, socially, culturally.