You want to fly in jets, and I just want to fly" -Baby Carlyle

Most people were raised to believe they are just as good as the next person. I was always told I was better.

My biggest fear in writing 'Gossip Girl' was that the characters would sound like stereotypical rich, air-headed heiresses. These were my friends. They were smart and multifaceted. They had interests and passions. They wanted to become lawyers and doctors and writers and filmmakers.

Who has time to make up stories when the truth is so much more interesting?

Even now, I change my style and clothes from one day to the next, but during high school I blended in. I think a lot of people are that way. I guess that's why I can write about an array of characters.

...don't act like I didn't for you. I did. Hard. And for a long time. So please, forgive me if now that we're over, I'm exhausted.

I feel like 'Gossip Girl' isn't really 'Gossip Girl' anymore when they're away at school because they don't go to NYU; they go to, like, Yale and Brown. New York City is just as much a character as anyone else in the books, and I was really sort of reluctant to show them off in their separate college worlds.