How much time have I wasted on diets and what I look like? People are saying 'We love you and love what you do' and you're sitting there thinking 'I'm not skinny enough or pretty enough.' It's taken a lot of work to get over that.

Kids not only understand [a dark story] but appreciate it … Because in the real world there's fear, and dark things happen no matter how young you are. People lose parents, people lose friends … There's darkness in the world. So I think when kids are talked to in that way, they appreciate it. They're not being given some candy-coated, 'Oh, this is a world where there are no stakes.' I think that actually insults their intelligence.

I don't think running for office is anything I'm prepared for or could even prepare myself for.

To me, the tragedy about this whole image-obsessed society is that young girls get so caught up in just achieving that they forget to realize that they have so much more to offer the world.

The name America has definitely grown on me. I wish there was a big patriotic story behind it, but the truth is that my grandfather was a librarian who knew all sorts of random facts.

My siblings are my best friends.

As early as second grade I remember feeling really different and isolated. I had the hugest crush on a boy, and my best friend had a crush on him, too. One day he said to me, 'I like your best friend more because she's paler and she has freckles.' And it was right then that I began to feel like, Oh wow, I'm different.