Cecily von Ziegesar
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.Collection: Teen
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.Collection: Humor
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.
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.
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!
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 always resented books that tried to teach a lesson, where the characters are too good: They don't swear, they tell their mothers everything.
I'd never really babysat. I feel like I'm Blair, or 'Gossip Girl.' A teenager, basically - and now suddenly I'm a mom?
When I meet other parents and they're more 'mumsy' than I am - you know, I don't want to be 'mumsy,' but I'm like, 'Were you always like that or... what happened?'
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!
I tend to stare at people and memorize what they're saying and how they say it.
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.'
Face it, you have to be sort of an egomaniac to write something down and think that anyone is going to want to read it.
Even now, I change my style and clothes from one day to the next, but during high school I blended in. I think a lot of people are that way. I guess that's why I can write about an array of characters.
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.
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 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.
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.
'Gossip Girl' came out in rapid succession over two years, so the endings always had to be suspenseful so that you couldn't wait for the next one.
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!
I guess I was popular in high school.
I remember, in my senior year, one of my teachers taking me aside and saying: 'You look really tired.' This was when I was being a bad kid and she knew that something was wrong.
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.
The girls show more skin these days, but I think, generally, they behave the same way as when I was growing up.
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 doing that thing some people do when they act nice and chipper and interested, while just below the surface they’re thinking really mean thoughts, and you can never call them on it because they’d just accuse you of being paranoid.Collection: Nice
No matter the truth, people see what they want to see.Collection: People
And who am I? That's one secret I'll never tell...You know you love me. XOXO, Gossip GirlCollection: Girl
I know hate is a strong word and everything, but its okay: we're teenagers.Collection: Strong
Destiny is for losers. It's just a lame excuse for letting things happen to you instead of making them happen.Collection: Destiny
You can't make people love you but you can make them fear youCollection: Gossip Girl
Just because we can't be together doesn't mean I don't love youCollection: Gossip Girl
Taste of metal on my tongue. Poison the color of envy- I'm delirious, you're delicious, I'm deluded and delusional. I'm lost without you. I need you.Collection: Color
Give a girl a boyfriend and she becomes a total expert on relationshipsCollection: Boyfriend
I'll tell you what I think. I think you need to stay indoors reading more books!Collection: Book
It's physics. Pure physics, I'm falling fast and faster still. So fall with me. Fall down with me. And stay.Collection: Fall
I don't eat chicken abortions!Collection: Abortion
Most people were raised to believe they are just as good as the next person. I was always told I was better.Collection: Believe
...forgiving is not the same as forgetting.Collection: Forgiving
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.Collection: Girl
...don't act like I didn't for you. I did. Hard. And for a long time. So please, forgive me if now that we're over, I'm exhausted.Collection: Girl
There's a boy who they call Pony! He's always acting gross and horny! He thinks he's got a lot down there, but he sure wears tiny underwear!Collection: Boys
Sometimes a b.f.f makes you go W.T.F but without them we'd all be a little less richer in our lives .Collection: Littles
Smart, truly hilarious, and entirely sympathetic. Like a hot bubble bath or a holiday at the beach, you won't want it to end.Collection: Beach
Open the fridge and put My heart on a plate. I'm just as you left me, and I taste even better leftover.Collection: Heart
You said she's a senior? Babe we're ALL crazy.Collection: Senior
the only way to tolerate the thought of her mother sleeping with that man was to get drunk-very drunk.Collection: Mother
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 possibleCollection: Laughter
the garbage cans and mailboxes on the sidewalk would stay the same, but the people would be just a beautiful blur of motion.Collection: Beautiful
Blair liked to think of herself as a hopeless romantic in the style of old movie actresses like Audrey Hepburn and Marilyn Monroe. She was always coming up with plot devices for the movie she was starring in at the moment, the movie that was her life.Collection: Thinking