Anyone else feel like that? Like your life's a big act. Like you're trying to be a man when you're just a scared kid, trying to keep under control when you really want to scream, cry, or maybe hit someone. Ever feel like you're breathing underwater and you have to stop because you're gulping in too much fluid.

Although my other ambition was to be a musical theater star (and I would attend college on a voice scholarship), writing was never far from my mind.

In stories like Cinderella and Beauty and the Beast, they always say the heroine is 'as good as she is beautiful.' I wondered if people just wanted that to be true, wanted the beautiful to be good. I wondered if they wanted the ugly to be bad because then they wouldn't have to feel bad for them.

Any experience that isn't fun is probably something I will at least use in my writing someday.

I am a princess. I do not follow fashions--I make them.

That's what true love should be like-the person should be part of your soul and you should know what they're feeling all the time.

I have a great deal of empathy for anyone who's having a hard time. I believe this ability to see another's viewpoint has served me well as a writer.