I wasn't intentionally trying to be different, but that was an element of what I naturally do that happened to be unique enough to spark a curiosity for people.

I don't think I'm conscious of most of the things I've drawn from football, because they're so ingrained in me now... understanding that the discipline and the routine and the regimentation to be successful.

When I graduated high school, I bought a guitar and, at first, didn't really think I'd get into the songwriting thing as much as I did. But after learning a few songs of other people's to play on the guitar, I got bored with that and just started writing songs on my own, and that's kinda how it came about.

I'm still learning a lot as a songwriter. I try to write down and make a note of ideas that I cross paths with on a day-to-day basis, whether it be a conversation or something I hear on the radio, seeing a movie, or just thoughts in my head as I'm walking down the street.

I want work that, possessing as thin a membrane as possible between life and art, foregrounds the question of how the writer solves being alive.

I consider myself first of all an artist. My work is about my creativity - why I create and not for whom.

Nothing I had written before 'Mary Poppins' had anything to do with children, and I have always assumed, when I thought about it at all, that she had come out of the same wall of nothingness as the poetry, myth and legend that had absorbed me all my writing life.

The demons you have are what motivate you to make your art. This is what drives the detective, this is what drives the painter, this is what drives the writer: a conflicting urge to forget pain and at the same time remember it and fight for some kind of justice. I know these powerful things are inside of me and everyone in some way or another.