Taste of metal on my tongue. Poison the color of envy- I'm delirious, you're delicious, I'm deluded and delusional. I'm lost without you. I need you.

And who am I? That's one secret I'll never tell...You know you love me. XOXO, Gossip Girl

I always resented books that tried to teach a lesson, where the characters are too good: They don't swear, they tell their mothers everything.

When I meet other parents and they're more 'mumsy' than I am - you know, I don't want to be 'mumsy,' but I'm like, 'Were you always like that or... what happened?

Back in my days as a children's book editor, my superiors caught on to the fact that teenagers were using the Internet to gossip about each other, and thought it might be nifty to develop a series of books about an anonymous high-school blogger who gossips about her classmates. The concept was passed on to me.

Face it, you have to be sort of an egomaniac to write something down and think that anyone is going to want to read it.

When I was 16, 17, 18 years old, I felt like I had seen it all and done it all, and I was really kind of negative about everything.