When I first heard the word existential, I didn't know what it meant. But then I found out that no one knows what it means, so now I use it all the time.

But the way I see it, dying without knowing love would be a tragedy.

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

Elizabeth scowled, feeling like a nobody, a nothing. She felt like her entire self had been made worthless. She could change her interests, but she couldn't change her looks. She'd never be six feet tall. She'd never look like a supermodel.

Humiliation, by the way, is a truly terrible emotion. It's at the bottom of the pile.

Another funny thing about having friends was that they expected things of you. they made you want to not be a terrible, awful, execrable person. They made you feel worse when you were one. It was a lot easier not to have any friends.

I love 'Sweet Valley,' but I love it from a different angle. There are people for whom it is their adolescence. They own it, in a way that even I don't. I've come to respect the project more because of the response than I've had. It's more important than I realized it was. I didn't understand the breadth and depth of it. now I'm beginning to more.