I am seventeen. The good things about seventeen is that you’re not sixteen. Sixteen goes with the word sweet, and I am so far from sweet.

I know you think that when you're 35, 45, 55, you'll be different. But I'm going to let you in on a bit of a secret. You're going to look different, and your life is going to be different, but in your head you'll always be that 16-year-old girl.

Ella's supersonic voice followed her all the way to Bleecker Street and then dissolved amid the noisy profusion of shops, cafes, and restaurants and the crush of people that made the West Village of Manhattan unique in the world. In a single block you could buy fertility statues from Tanzania, rare Amazonian orchids, a pawned brass tuba, Krispy Kreme doughnuts, or the best, most expensive cup of coffee you ever tasted. It was the doughnuts, incidentally, that attracted Gaia.

The human heart was undeniably the stupidest organ in the body.

Since I was a small child, I was always writing either poems or plays... plays in which I had the starring part.

She needed to get out of there. Her brains, thankfully, were still safely in her skull, but her emotions were splattered on the pavement.

I always loved reading. Growing up, my favorite book was 'A Child's Garden of Verses,' by Robert Louis Stevenson.