Cecily von Ziegesar

“Give a girl a boyfriend and she becomes a total expert on relationships”

“But I've always been fascinated with that prettiest-girl-in-the-class person that I never was, getting inside her head and showing that she's just as tormented and messed up as everybody else.”

“I used to be an editor and I was editing young adult series. I didn't really like the books that I was reading, so I decided that I would write a book about something I'd want to read if I was 16. It turned into a Cinderella story... I developed a proposal and the characters of 'Gossip Girl' for my job.”

“I certainly didn't say while writing 'Gossip Girl,' 'Oh this is going to be big!' It was really like, 'Oh god, everyone's gong to hate these people! They're so bratty!' But I actually think what is so appealing about them is the humor in them.”

“I tend to stare at people and memorize what they're saying and how they say it.”

“I decided that, if I were to write a teen series, I'd want to set it in a place that was familiar to me - Manhattan, where I'd grown up - and I'd model the characters on myself and my friends.”

“I avoid the young adult section altogether if possible, although it's sometimes fun to catch a girl lying on the floor, reading 'Gossip Girl.'”

“Not that she didn't love almost every boy she'd ever met, and not that every boy in the world didn't totally love her. It was impossible not to. But she wanted someone to love her and shower her with attention the way only a boy who was completely in love with her could. The rare sort of love. True love. The kind of love she'd never had.”

“Open the fridge and putMy heart on a plate.I'm just as you leftme, and I taste even betterleftover.”

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

“I'm always saying that my books are not autobiographical because they're not. I can't choose any one scene and say, 'Oh, this is exactly what happened to me!' I just use little snippets of things as a starting point!”

“I went to Colby College in Waterville, ME and did picture it when I was writing 'Cum Laude.' So many of the physical details were included, like the loop where people jogged. The story of the chapel is also borrowed from Colby... but the students and cast of characters are fictional.”

“Recently my publicist asked me for a college photo, and I realize how chubby I looked. I know this sounds totally shallow, but my advice is don't fall prey to the freshmen fifteen!”

“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.”

“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.”

“She was spoiled, but she wasn't lazy. She knew what she wanted, and because she believed absolutely that she could have everything she wanted if she tried hard enough to get it, she never stopped trying.”

“I'd never really babysat. I feel like I'm Blair, or 'Gossip Girl.' A teenager, basically - and now suddenly I'm a mom?”

“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.”

“I know hate is a strong word and everything, but its okay: we're teenagers.”

“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”