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

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.

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.

Your real name is a mortal name. Now you need one that is immortal, the one that takes the high stage and plays above the rest. You can't be immortal and mortal at the same time.

I first read Harper Lee's 'To Kill a Mockingbird' as a teen in school, like you did. I read the book alone, eating lunch at my locker, neatly scored oranges my mother divided into five lines with a circle at the top, so my fingers could dig more easily into the orange skin. To this day, the smell of oranges reminds me of 'Mockingbird.'