"One of my favorite books when I was a teenager! I still keep it around the house and periodically look at it."

"The next one would be Dead Alive by Peter Jackson. Again, another animated cartoon with live actors, and this is a film that really showed me how you can take a violent, dark situation and make it comic. Lots of blood, lots of decapitation, lots of violence, and yet it’s a comedy. That was a big influence on me when I started doing I Married a Strange Person!. I really referred a lot to Dead Alive."

"I found this really unnerving when I first read it at age eight. There’s a lot of talk lately about “kids’ books for adults.” But this is an adult book for kids—a realistic, complex, and not at all dumbed down look at a girl who wants more than anything else to be a writer. When I grew up and learned that Fitzhugh was a lesbian, that explained a bit more about why Harriet resonated so much for me."