I just feel lucky to have grown up where I did because I think it gave me a nice base. Hollywood can really mess with your sense of self and I feel like coming from the South keeps me pretty grounded.

If I wasn't an actress I'd want to be a writer or else find a job where I got to read books and watch movies all day, everyday, for the rest of my life.

Life is short, and I'd rather be sitting in the poor house doing what I love doing than making a lot of money and being miserable. Life is very short.

I'm such a geek, I know all about mythology and I don't know Marc Jacobs.

For me, I'm constantly writing stuff that is what I'm dealing with on a personal, psychological level. And I think that I bring that to whatever I'm doing, whether it's being an actor or a writer or whatever it is I'm doing. I think you can't help but do that.

Mindi Scott has a real talent for getting inside her protagonist's head. She sketches out Coley's story in grand swathes, and then paints in all the little details, so that you feel as though you are enmeshed in Coley's brain: thinking her thoughts, feeling her confusion, anger, and, in the end, pain. I just don't think it's possible to read this book and not identify with Coley in some way.

I'm not going to throw up or over-exercise myself into oblivion to look like a model. People tell me, 'You'd work all the time if you just lost twenty pounds.' What am I going to do, cut off my head?!