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.

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.

Nate stared, slack-jawed as the cab merged with the traffic and became impossible to spot. That was it. They chose each other. Just then, the dark sky lit up with fireworks. A cab sailing the street honked in celebration . In the night air , Nate thought he could hear Serena and Blairs' laughter, though he knew that was impossible; they were too far away by now. But as we know, in this city anything is possible

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.

The girls show more skin these days, but I think, generally, they behave the same way as when I was growing up.

I don't eat chicken abortions!

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.