I'm just a crazy person. I mean, I really didn't have any trouble coming up with weird ways for people to die. I think I'm just very twisted!

My high school wasn't a big public school; it was tiny. There were 36 girls in my graduating class. We were a big group of girls that by the time senior year came along couldn't wait to get away from school fast enough but we loved each other. It's really fun to see the girls at reunions now.

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.

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.

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.

I have no sense of what I should or shouldn't talk about. I just blather. Which is why it's fun to write 'Gossip Girl.' I do tend to just talk about anything.

...forgiving is not the same as forgetting.